Hanging on a String Read Online Free PDF

dating.”
    â€œChester didn’t know the meaning of friendship,” said Dahlia. “You were a friend to him. He didn’t know anything about being a friend to you. Look at how he treated Wallace Barker.”
    I wiped at my eyes as I thought about hapless Wallace. Wallace had been Chester’s roommate at Yale. He’d gotten Chester to join his firm, and according to Wallace, Chester stole his clients and also became a named respondent in Wallace’s divorce papers. Chester’s story was somewhat different. Wallace’s clients, said Chester, came without any urging on Chester’s part, and Wallace’s wife, well, that was just a figment of Wallace’s overactive imagination.
    A few weeks ago, I’d seen Wallace in the firm’s reception area. He told me he’d come to visit with Chester. In light of his history with Chester, I’d been surprised, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Perhaps Wallace had decided to forgive and move on. I hear it’s good for the soul. I know that my habit of keeping a grudge past the time that I knew what the grudge was originally about bordered on the excessive.
    â€œI saw Wallace at the office about two weeks ago. He was there to visit Chester. I assumed they’d kissed and made up,” I told Dahlia.
    â€œPerhaps.” Dahlia was not forthcoming. There was something else behind her bland response, but I was going to have to wait until she decided to share with me whatever was clouding her eyes.
    The sound of wind chimes signaled the arrival of another customer in the bookstore. Addie came over to where we were sitting and said, “I need some help, Dahlia. The cash register won’t open.”
    â€œI’ll be right back, “ Dahlia said as she and Addie went to deal with the recalcitrant register.
    I turned my thoughts back to Wallace. When I saw him in the office, I’d been taken aback. He had, however, remained uncharacteristically cool, as if there was nothing at all strange about him breaking bread with the man he credited with ruining his marriage and his career. I simply figured he’d forgiven Chester. Still, I’d thought it was odd, as I remembered the bitterness that engulfed Chester when he left Wallace’s firm. Wallace’s wife, Laura, had gone to school with me and Dahlia at Wellesley. She came from money, and we knew some of the same people. But while I was staging sit-ins on the main steps of the administration building against various societal injustices, Wallace’s wife was hitting the party circuit, looking for someone with a big bank account to marry. Our paths hardly crossed, and when they did, she was polite but distant. She was attractive, but I always wondered what Wallace saw in a woman who was so openly mercenary.
    Dahlia came back in the tea shop and sat down at the table.
    â€œEverything okay with the register?” I asked.
    â€œIt wasn’t the register,” she replied. “It’s Addie and her crazy self. Guess what she was reading up there at the register?”
    â€œI’d rather not,” I laughed.
    â€œSome book called Buck Wild: How To Please Your Man And Make Him Cry For More. Addie just turned seventy. Who the hell is she trying to please?”
    â€œGirl, you and your crazy relatives,” I laughed. “I’m not mad at her. At least her juices are still flowing. I think mine have just dried up.”
    â€œSomeday your prince will come.” Dahlia smiled. “But until then, I’m sure Addie can give you some tips with her nasty self!”
    Dahlia was constantly finding jobs for her relatives, or sending them to me for free legal advice.
    Just as suddenly as my laughter came, it faded. I’d forgotten Chester’s death for a brief moment ... but reality soon intruded. I thought about Chester and all the people he had hurt. People like Wallace.
    â€œHow’s Wallace?” I asked.
    â€œI think he’s