In Twenty Years: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

, but Jesus, could you blame her? Who wouldn’t want to jump off a bridge at the notion of another discussion about seating charts?
    Not to mention, Lindy wasn’t exactly in favor of marriage in general.
    But the way Catherine derided her at brunch the next morning?
    Lindy splays back into her Eames chair behind her desk and bounces eight times—like a beat, like a rhythm—to calm herself.
    She figured maybe they’d all just move the fuck on after the funeral. Jesus, Bea was dead; she figured they could at least forget the wedding. But no, she saw it immediately in Catherine’s stupid stoic jaw, in Annie’s weak eyes that refused to meet her own. So Lindy decided right then and there, even at Bea’s funeral, to screw that. It’s not her fault that their dinner that night went south, that what should have been an evening where they reminisced about their old friend, when they should have found their way back to one another, was instead the night things detonated for good.
    What had Catherine said to her? Lindy squints, focusing on one of the framed platinum albums on the wall.
    That Lindy “ruined everything.” Ah yes, that was it. That she’d wrecked their friendships, the bonds among the six of them. That everything was always about what Lindy wanted, that she was “take, take, take.” And she took, and then it ruined everything.
    What bullshit, Lindy thinks now, just as she did back then. A lot of things ruined them, like Bea dying.
    She bounces again in her chair.
    Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
    Bea is dead.
    Why did she send us a letter?
    Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
    When did she have time to buy our old house?
    In quarter time.
    Bouncebouncebouncebounce.
    Bea is really dead. Jesus, Bea is still dead.
    For the first year or so after the funeral, it plagued Lindy, it probably plagued all of them, but she was done with them all, didn’t stay in touch, so she couldn’t be sure. Still, though, she’d find herself awake at 3:00 a.m., staring into the darkness of a hotel-room ceiling or listening to the clattering of the tour bus’s wheels and wondering: Why is Bea dead? And not just in a metaphorical sense, like: “Why her?” but also: Really, how did it happen? Peeling around a curve too quickly? Asleep at the wheel? Drunk driving? That last one made sense: the just-so combination of reckless and animalistic that embodied Bea when she dialed things up. Over time, Lindy came to take this explanation as fact: when she thinks of Bea now (which she rarely does, if she’s being honest), her next thought is something akin to: Oh, my friend who died in a drunk-driving accident.
    This rationality provided solace. And solace meant that she could forget.
    So now, why all of this?
    A knock on her office door, then the hinges opening before Lindy can reply.
    “Hey, babe.”
    Tatiana.
    Instinctively, Lindy reaches for her phone and drops it in her lap, concealed. Like Leon’s text is a land mine that Tatiana might happen upon. No need to blow anything up.
    Lindy feels Tatiana’s arms wind themselves around her torso as she folds over her from behind. She kisses her neck, and Lindy detects a hint of mandarin orange, some new body lotion, a gift from one of her clients.
    “Hey,” Lindy says, dropping her head back against T’s shoulder, then righting herself as Tatiana does the same. “Just give me a second. Just . . . checking something.”
    Because she can’t help herself (she is very bad at helping herself, actually), Lindy clicks onto Catherine’s home page, The Crafty Lady. She’s built herself an empire, but Lindy’s not particularly surprised. Catherine was always more ambitious than any of the others gave her credit for: she was intent on selling the most baked goods for their sorority spring charity event; she was constantly toiling in their shitty little kitchen, testing and tossing recipes, trying to best the one before.
    French toast. That’s what Lindy remembers about Catherine. She’d