I'll Be There Read Online Free PDF

building and moved toward her car, she could feel in the back of her neck that Nina was watching her from the window.
    For a while she sat behind the wheel, looking back at the school buildings, so torn apart she couldn’t even start the car. Finally she did and she drove slowly away, back to Highway 1 and south, this time toward the Monterey Peninsula Airport, with the memory of Nina’s little face lodged in the front of her brain and a burr of sadness stuck in her heart.
     
    According to the clock on the dashboard of the Chevy she was early, so she pulled into the parking lot of Del Monte Aviation, where she sat for a while looking out at all of the airplanes, then with a resigned deep breath she made herself get out of the car and walk around to the trunk, which she opened so she could take out the box wrapped in white paper.
    “Dying and flying,” she said, “my two biggest phobias, and you, the woman who called herself my best friend, have managed to make sure I had to deal with both of them at the same time. Well, don’t worry, Bert. I fully intend to get back at you for this, as soon as I find out how to reach you from Shirley MacLaine.” Then she got back into the car, put the box on the passenger seat, and sat looking out at the rows of private airplanes parked just beyond the fence, and finally too aware of its presence to ignore it, she .looked at the box again, leaned over, and tore at the wrapping paper to uncover the package inside. Then, filled with a mixture of horror and curiosity, she pulled up on the lid, and unwound the top of the plastic bag inside the box.
    The color. The first thing that struck her was the color. Not black or gray the way she pictured it would look. Not at all like cigarette ashes. But a light color. Like chopped coral, or seashells. Coarse and uneven pieces of what looked like.., oh God. Bones. She closed her eyes.
    “Bert,” she said, “I always told you I loved you to pieces, but I
     
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    didn’t mean as small as these.” Hearing herself say that made he laugh, a horrified laugh at her own black humor. The kirid Berti, loved. And she knew Bertie would have laughed her ass off at that What would ever be funny again? Hysterical, the way things used t be when she was with Bertie. Even things that didn’t seem funm when she was alone, somehow, when they were together, could makq them both laugh like idiots. Like that dopey running gag they had fo years where Cee Cee would say, “If one of us dies, I’m moving t Miami Beach.” It had been Nathan and Leona’s joke that Cee Cee usec to overhear all the time when she was a kid. And after she told it t Bertie, the two of them had adopted it as their own.
    One night when she wasn’t kidding,, but long before she ever go sick, Bertie said, “Cee, you know I was thinking recently, | hope I di before you do.” It must have been one of those times Cee Cee wa, visiting her in Sarasota. Yeah. It was one of those conversations they had until four in the morning. Bertie was real maudlin that night, probably because she was pregnant and her hormones were on the fritz. And after talking the night away they had decided to make some popcorn because it was a low-calorie snack. Of course they’d smothered it in butter and Cee Cee had washed hers down with a little Sara Lee chocolate cake she’d found in the freezer and defrosted in the oven. “Because if you ever died first and I was still on this earth without you, I’d be miserable.”
    “I’ll tell you what, kiddo,” Cee Cee had offered, polishing off the last bite of the cake, “just to make sure that doesn’t happen, if I ever get real sick.., we’ll have you killed.” Bertie had laughed a lot at that one. So look what happened. She got her wish. She died first and it was Cee Cee who was left to go on without her. And now they wouldn’t get old together the way they always swore they would, from the time they had noticed two little old ladies