Running on Empty Read Online Free PDF Page B

never occurred to Mrs. B that some people actually ate the venison
     to get some protein into the family's diet, a distinction that made a difference to
     AnnaLise.
    Another horn sounded and Mrs. B moved on with a dismissive flapping of her hand at
     the wrist.
    When AnnaLise re-entered Mama's, it was as if she hadn't left, except that the good-looking
     stranger in the booth was gone.
    'All I'm telling you,' Mama was saying to Daisy as AnnaLise took the bench across
     from them, 'is that
AnnieLeez
shouldn't be ruling Bobby Bradenham out as a husband.'
    'AnnieLeez'
almost got back up. Instead, she took a couple of deep, cleansing yoga breaths. After
     all, she'd be there only two more days. A person could stand anything for forty-eight
     hours, right?
    'OK,' she said sternly, using her index finger to snake her cake plate back. 'Let's
     put an end to this here and now. Bobby and I are friends. There's no chemistry beyond
     that, never was, never will be.'
    She could see Bobby, still in conversation with Ichiro Katou. The two seemed to be
     filling out documents.
    'But there was with Chuck Greystone.' Mama said, with a sideways glance at Daisy.
    They giggled.
    Two days after
today. Which meant more like sixty, sixty-five hours, not forty-eight.
    AnnaLise looked up at the clock on the wall. Its minute hand seemed to be crawling
     backwards.
    'Chuck and I are good friends, too.' AnnaLise felt like she was talking to middle-schoolers.
     'In fact, I just saw him. Standing over the body.'
    AnnaLise expected the bald remark to turn the conversation, but apparently her love
     life — or their perception that she had none — was infinitely more fascinating to
     them.
    Mama was nodding. 'The Three Musketeers, that's what we called them. You remember,
     Daisy?'
    If it was intended as a memory test, AnnaLise's mother was about to earn a passing
     grade. 'AnnaLise, Chuck and Sheree Pepper. Sheree had such a crush on that boy. It
     reminded me of you, me and Tim. A triangle.'
    Timothy Griggs had been AnnaLise's father. From what Daisy had told her, Daisy, Phyllis
     and Tim had been the 'Three Musketeers' of their generation.
    'Phyllis, you always had a crush on Tim, and you know it,' Daisy continued as the
     front door chimed.
    Mama's turn to blush, but she was saved from answering when a wiry woman with cropped,
     nearly white-blonde hair swooped down on them.
    'Move over, girlfriend.' Joy Tamarack plopped herself on the bench. AnnaLise didn't
     bounce up like Daisy had when Mama sat down, probably because Joy, a physical trainer,
     weighed about a hundred pounds. And all muscle. She practically crushed AnnaLise's
     ribs with her hug.
    'I'm so glad to see you,' AnnaLise said when she'd regained her breath. 'But isn't
     this a little late in the year for the Frat Pack?'
    Joy and a dozen of her old college sorority sisters took over Sheree's Sutherton Inn
     annually for a weekend of, as Joy once put it, 'drinking, smoking and engaging in
     aural — that's a-u-r-a-l — sex. Meaning we just listen to each other lie about it.'
    'We pushed back the date, Annie-girl. Everyone's biological clocks went off, shall
     we say, belatedly yet simultaneously last year, so some of us needed to schedule around
     spouses and — ' she wrinkled her nose — 'babies.'
    Joy's expression made it clear that her own personal biological clock could go hang
     itself.
    'No new relationship?' AnnaLise asked. God knows she was asked often enough. It was
     only fair to reciprocate by torturing others.
    'Hell, no. Once was enough. More than enough.'
    Joy, mid-twenties at the time, had been wife number 3 of the legendary Dickens Hart.
     Less than a year later, she'd caught Hart helping himself to, in Joy's words, 'a little
     Tail.' As in one of the lodge's Fawns.
    Joy might have been young, but even then she was a shrewd businesswoman and had come
     out of the divorce in fine form. Since Hart had plenty of practice with prenups by
     that time, AnnaLise had always