Beauty Queen

sure Sidney didn't try to divorce her.
    She moved her eyes to her father, who was sitting across the table, hidden behind his copy of Barron's.
    The matter of her father was different, however.
    At first she had wept, gnashed her teeth, railed, called him un-Christian names. But by some mysterious power, the very next day, when she woke up, she put on her clothes and came over here, the same as usual. She wanted to talk to him, to understand how this monstrous thing had happened, how it had been hidden from her all these years, how she had been too stupid to see it. It didn't mean she would approve of her father's sin, of course. But after all, he was her father. One didn't break fellowship with one's father.
    It would all take some more time to sort out. But, then, she needed a little more time anyway. She hadn't been ready to go back into action yet. Her nerves weren't steady enough, and she had a lot more thinking to do. She was beginning to understand those dreams she'd had. That dead woman in the beauty queen's clothing was not Satan, nor her mother, nor even herself!—but the fears and terrors that still stood between her past and the person that she could be.
    Tomorrow was another day, as Scarlett O'Hara had said in that famous novel.
    Funny she should be quoting that notorious lady to herself. Scarlett O'Hara was such an infidel, and a beauty queen.
    Behind his copy of Barron's, Bill could feel his daughter's silence. Her thoughts were so loud that it was like gears grinding.
    But he didn't say anything. He was letting her ask all the questions, shape the discussions herself. She would have to sort it out for herself, and he wasn't sure that it would lead to a meeting of their minds. She still got pretty violent when Marion's name was mentioned, and she swore that she would tear that depraved queer to bits if he set foot in Bill's house, that queer who had seduced and defiled her father. Bill had smiled a little on hearing this. It certainly was a change from her insistence that dirty old men seduced innocent young boys.
    Still, she had showed up here for breakfast the next morning, which surprised and pleased him.
    She was also talking about disbanding her political organization. It was possible that she felt she couldn't win with her father being openly gay. He also had the feeling that she would cease and desist from her moralistic crusading for a time.
    He put down his paper and said, "More coffee, sweetheart?"
    "Yeah, I guess so," she said.
    He poured her a cup, then settled back and looked out over the harbor.
    In a few months, if all went well, he and Marion would be moving into the house on Catherine Slip. He didn't know if she would come all the way down there for breakfast, especially with Marion there, but . . . time would tell.
    He had already had one painful conversation with his brother. Al had taken the news much harder than Jeannie had—he wasn't even speaking to Bill, for the moment. Bill wasn't sure whether their business and family relationship would survive this crisis. All he knew was that, from now on, he had to live just one day at a time.
    He looked out over his terrace railing at the harbor. He could almost make out the masts of the Peking, far down there in the haze.
    And out past the Brooklyn Bridge, he could see a snowy-white ship, a freighter or a cruise ship, making her way slowly out across the harbor, toward the channel. His spirit followed her with a powerful surge, out past the Verrazzano Bridge, out past the long low horizon of Long Island, out past the Montauk Light.
    He had lost count of the ships he had watched in the past. And he had already lost count of the ones that he and Marion would watch—white ships with evexy inch of canvas crowded on, making their way boldly out to the open sea.
    “Patricia Nell Warren’s long-awaited sequel to her classic novel, The Front Runner, is bittersweet and deeply nostalgic ... a damn good thriller with a nice sideline romance and some hot sex thrown in . . . offers a chilling review of the past 20 years of queer life in America.”    —     The    Advocate
    “The hot book of the summer is Harlan's Race.”
    -Edge
    “This is the author who wrote what is thought to be the most important piece of literature of the post-Stonewall Era... Now 20 years later, she has written the sequel to it, Harlan’s Race.”    —     Update
    “Harlan’s Race captures the queer reader who has lived through the last 20 years