Real Life & Liars Read Online Free PDF Page A

feeling the air on my skin.
    “Tomorrow, after the party, I think. Or maybe Sunday morning, before they all leave.”
    “Are you going to tell them…all of it?”
    Max means, am I going to tell them that I won’t go back there, to that doctor with her scalpel and her anesthesia, and her chemicals and radiation.
    “I think I’d better, don’t you?”
    “They won’t like it.” He grips the pages tighter. I expect he’s right about the kids. But it’s not their choice to make. Nor is it his, no matter what he seems to think. Max continues, “You shouldn’t tell them that part. You might change your mind. Why upset them?”
    “I’m not going to change my mind.”
    “Mira, it’s only been a few days, give yourself time…”
    “Leave me alone, I’m trying to get dressed.”
    Max shrinks out of the room, and I feel a sinking in my chest. Because I have a finite number of words left—who can say how many?—and each one that’s less than loving is a squandered opportunity.
    The burden of this impending end makes me gasp for air for just a moment, then I shake it off by closing my eyes and brushing my hand across the mess and the dirt and the pain, wiping it all away.

CHAPTER 6
Katya
    KATYA CLUCKS HER TONGUE AT THE SIGHT OF HER MOTHER’S YARD, as it comes into view of her Escalade’s front windshield. Viny, creeping weeds smother the grass, and chunks of tall fescue stab up through the mess to announce, Look! No one has mowed here for a week!
    She feels reassured in her argument against having the anniversary party under a tent in the yard. It’s a double lot, it would have been big enough—the carriage house was long ago torn down by some previous owner, so the Victorian home stands alone, with plenty of lawn—but really, for such a lovely event to be held over the top of all those weeds seemed so wrong. Like a Tiffany diamond wrapped in cellophane.
    Katya frowns at the clouds on the horizon. They look benign enough so far, puffy and light. But the weather forecasts have been showing ominously increasing chances for rain tomorrow.
    “Charles, you missed the house.”
    “Mmm? Oh. I’ll go around the block.”
    “Dad! I’ve gotta pee!”
    “For Christ’s sake, Taylor, you can hold it two more minutes. I’ve had enough out of you.”
    Katya winces at his tone with their younger son. Charles remains eternally disappointed that neither of his sons seems appropriate as heir apparent to Peterson Enterprises. Hope is not lost for Kit, but Katya has to allow that she doesn’t seem a likely prospect, given her current trajectory on the apprentice-bimbo track.
    Anyway, Katya thinks bitterly as the SUV pulls into the long drive up to the house, their daughter could be the next Madeleine Albright and it would never cross Charles’s mind to appoint a woman as his successor.
    Mira appears on the screened-in back porch. Through the haze of the screen she looks exactly like her youthful self, with the same Rapunzel waves of hair. She never did cut her hair short and resort to a curly perm like her contemporaries. Mira opens the door and the effect is gone like the wink of a firefly. Now she is just her postmenopausal self, wrinkles and silver hair intact. Bangles rattle on her wrist as she glides down the stairs to greet the family.
    “Oh, I’ve missed you,” she whispers into Katya’s hair as she squishes her into a hug.
    Katya steps back. “Mom, you should wear shoes out here; you’ll cut yourself on these rocks.”
    “Oh, for pity’s sake, I’m barefoot so often my feet are tough as any old sandals.” To demonstrate, she picks up a foot and shows Katya the sole: darkened by dirt and worn as the cover of an old book.
    “Maybe tomorrow we should get you a pedicure,” Katya muses, half to herself, as she grabs some bags of kid-friendly food out of the car. Chip and Tay each give a barely audible “hi” to their grandmother as they stomp through the porch, heading for the kitchen. No doubt they will