Love Anthony Read Free Page A

living-room chair with the mail.
    The bills are still sent to their house in Hingham, a small, suburban town on Boston’s South Shore, so she hasn’t yet received anything but home-repair-service advertisements, localelection postcards, and coupon flyers, but today she knows she has some real mail.
    Before even opening the first, she knows it’s a book from her old boss, Louise, a senior editor at Taylor Krepps. The envelope has a yellow forwarding-address sticker on it. Louise doesn’t know that Olivia has moved to Nantucket. She doesn’t know about Anthony either.
    She doesn’t know anything.
    Olivia hasn’t worked as a junior editor to Louise in self-help books at Taylor Krepps Publishing for five years now, but Louise still sends her advance reader copies. Maybe it’s Louise’s way of keeping the door open, of trying to entice Olivia back to work. Olivia suspects Louise has simply never gotten around to taking her off the mailing list. Olivia’s never hinted to Louise that she’d ever come back; it’s been a couple of years since she’s sent a note thanking her or commenting on a book, and even longer since she’s read any of them. But they keep coming.
    She doesn’t have the heart or stomach to read anybody’s self-help anymore. She’s no longer interested in anyone’s advice or wisdom. What do they know? What does it matter? It’s all bunk.
    She used to believe in the power of self-help books to educate, inform, and inspire. She believed that the really good ones could transform lives. When Anthony turned three and they were told with certainty what they were dealing with, she believed she’d find somebody somewhere who could help them, an expert who could transform their lives.
    She scoured every self-help book, then every medical journal, every memoir, every blog, every online parent support network. She read Jenny McCarthy and the Bible. She read and hoped and prayed and believed in anything claiming help, rescue, reversal, salvation. Somebody somewhere must know something. Somebody must have the key that would unlock her son.
    She opens the envelope and holds the book in her hands, rubbing the smooth cover with her fingers. She still loves the feel of a new book. This one is called The Three Day Miracle Diet by Peter Fallon, MD.
    Hmph. Miracle, my ass.
    She used to attend conferences and seminars. Please, expert Dr. So-and-So, show us the answer. I believe in you. She used to go to church every Sunday. Please, God, give us a miracle. I believe in you.
    Sorry, Dr. Fallon. There are no miracles, she thinks, and tosses the book to the floor.
    She holds up the cardboard envelope from David next, staring at it for a long moment before carefully tearing the tab and upending it.
    Three white, round, perfectly smooth rocks fall into her lap. She smiles. Anthony’s rocks. And three of them. She shakes the envelope. There aren’t any more. He would’ve liked that there are only three and not one or two or four. He loved things that came in threes. The Little Pigs, One-Two-Three-Go, Small-Medium-Big. Of course, he never said the words to her, Mom, I like the “Three Little Pigs” story . But she knew.
    She rolls the three small rocks in the palm of her hand, enjoying the cool, smooth feel of them. When she’s done with the mail, she’ll add them to the glass bowl on the coffee table already containing at least fifty more of Anthony’s white, round rocks. A shrine in a bowl.
    Anthony wouldn’t have liked his rocks in Olivia’s bowl on the coffee table, however. He preferred them lined up like perfectly straight rock parades on the floor, all over the house. Heaven forbid Olivia should ever clean up and put his rocks back in his box in his bedroom. But sometimes, she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes she simply wanted to walk through the house and not kick through a rock parade. Sometimes shesimply wanted to walk through a normal house. It was always a huge mistake. They didn’t live in a normal