New Year's Eve Read Online Free PDF Page A

have to stop nursing yet, just get her to take a bottle instead sometimes. So you’ve got the option.”
    Sharla pulled another glass from the cupboard and shot ice into it from the fridge door. I’ll never be rich enough to have a fridge with ice in the door. She poured another drink and put them all on a tray with chips and dip.
    “There!” Sharla said. Finally happy, now that I would have a drink. “It’ll be waiting for you.”
    Daisy finished nursing. I changed her diaper and put her in a fresh undershirt. She was happy, too. Fresh and clean and full of milk, she wanted to get down onto the carpet. Jade took her hands and let her stand up and stagger around for a while.
    “Okay, ladies,” Sharla said. “That hot tub is not going to soak itself.”
    I took the car seat and Jade brought Daisy. We all went back into the misty sunroom. Sharla put on music and made the jets in the tub whirl the water into froth.
    This time I didn’t think about it. I stripped off Sharla’s shirt and the jeans she’d given me and got into the tub in my underpants and t-shirt.
    I took Daisy back from Jade and slid her diaper off. The water was a bit too hot for her, but she could sit on the island of my knee. She loved it.
    The other two women stripped down, too. Sharla had no bodysuit this time, and neither did Jade. They just got out of their clothes without thinking about it. Like women in the gym sauna, easy about being naked. I wished I could do that.
    They were both pretty in their skin. Sharla pink and gold, thin but soft. She was right to make herself a blonde. It suited her. Jade’s dark hair fell over her shoulders and back. She looked like a police woman, like a runner. Strong and lean.
    RCMP women, wives and female members, seem to come in two kinds. Tin, strong-willed,and pretty, like these two. Or kind and dumpy, like me.
    But Jade was kind, too.
    And maybe it’s just that all women come in those two types. Hot tub and non–hot tub.
    Drinking the White Russian while sitting in the hot water made the treat even colder and sweeter. I stretched it out for as long as I could.

Chapter Eight

    It was New Year’s Eve, after all. Sharla and Jade talked through what had happened over the last year. I talked a little, too. Where we’d been (me nowhere; both of the others to Vegas). Who had died or got married. The bad and good things.
    With a sudden shout, Sharla jumped out of the tub. “Shit, I did it again!”
    She grabbed a short terry robe and ran to the kitchen. Whatever she had in the oven smelled good.
    “Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone!” she yelled back.
    That left us with nothing to talk about.
    After a minute I said, “Ron told us your husband went to Vegas for some golf.”
    Jade laughed. “We won a trip in the hospital lottery.”
    “That was lucky,” I said.
    She said, “Nah. Who wants heat and sun anyway, when you can have weather like this?”
    I shuddered.
    “I’m from up north,” Jade said. “I don’t mind the cold. I’d like to go home to Yellowknife. But it costs too much.”
    “Do you golf, too?” I asked her.
    She laughed again. “No! Tim doesn’t either. Golf is just an excuse.”
    “What’s he gone for, then?”
    “He’s leaving me.”
    Jade moved in the water. She swept her hair back and leaned her head on one hand. Water dripped from her hand and face.
    She corrected herself. “He’s thinking about it, about leaving.”
    I thought she might be crying, but her voice was calm.
    I said I was sorry. Looking at her, I couldn’t imagine her being left. She was so beautiful. How could he find somebody nicer?
    “The boys are old enough now. They’d be okay. It’s not like we haven’t thought about this before. I used to think about it all the time, when the kids were little. About how I’d leave him. What I’d do. I was going to get a bachelor apartment in Edmonton. I used to look at the apartments for rent section in the newspaper.”
    I wanted to