Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! Read Online Free PDF

feel awkward—which is exactly how I feel right now. I knew how much going to Paris meant to you. I didn’t want you to …”
    “To what? Be mad?”
    “Yes. And I didn’t want to feel as if I betrayed you or something.”
    Amy took slow steps across the driveway and headed for where I’d parked the car under a shady elm tree across the street. Instead of getting inside, we stood next to the car while Amy thought. I knew it was best not to say anything, even though I had so much to say, now that the subject had finally been brought out into the open.
    After a few moments, Amy drew back her shoulders. “How was it? Paris, I mean.”
    “It was terrible.”
    “No, really. Tell me.”
    I leaned against the trunk of the supportive tree. “I didn’t like Paris at all.”
    “You didn’t? You really, truly didn’t like Paris?”
    “No. Amy, Paris is not what you think. It’s a big city, and I think it’s awful.”
    Amy looked perplexed all over again. “How could Paris be awful? It’s the most romantic city in the world. The City of Lights. Everyone loves Paris.”
    “I didn’t.”
    Now Amy was the one studying my expression.
    “Seriously, Amy. I don’t want to go back to Paris again. Ever.”
    I hated bursting her pink, puffy, poodle-bubble. This uneasy moment was exactly why I’d avoided the conversation all these years.
    Before I could think of something to say that would smooth over my assessment of Paris, Amy lifted her chin, looked me in the eye, and with one defined eyebrow raised she asked, “What was his name?”
    The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Whose name?” I tried to keep my voice steady.
    “The name of the man who broke your heart in Paris.”
    At that moment I loved Amy for knowing. I wanted tothrow my arms around her and finally release all the hurt and sorrow I’d carried with me ever since the day I was left standing alone at the Gare du Nord train station.
    I was just about to tell Amy everything when a horrible screeching sound came toward us followed by a world-rocking wallop of a thud. We jumped back as a red truck turned my already ailing Honda into an accordion.
    Amy and I didn’t get to finish our conversation for years. Because the crash diverted us into another topic: marriage. That day I met my husband.
    Trevor, the driver of the car, missed his family’s driveway and hit my car while fiddling with the radio knob. Ronnie, my soon-to-be husband’s youngest son, was in the garage at the time and came running out to the elm tree. The entire neighborhood, it seemed, came out to peer at the shocking accident scene. The boys’ father, Joel, appeared and calmly made sense of the chaos. His wife had passed away when the boys were young, and Joel was accustomed to “managing the mess,” as he called it.
    Our first “date” was to the insurance claim adjustor’s office. Our second “date” was to the used car lot five days later. By the third date (this one actually included food—Milky Way candy bars from the snack machine at the credit union where I signed papers for the loan on my new Jeep Wrangler), we both knew we were going to keep meeting like this for the rest of our lives.
    Joel and I were married when I was thirty-seven andhe was forty-two. To Amy’s delight, Joel had a pinch of French blood in him on his dad’s side. I moved into Joel’s house with the sheltering elm tree where our smashing first encounter took place. Fitting into the lives of three men came easily for me. Within a few short years, both the boys were out on their own, and Joel and I were as settled in as if we had been married for thirty years instead of only half a dozen.
    That’s when the subject of Paris presented itself again.
    This time it was Grandmere’s doing. The dear woman had passed away several years earlier, and Amy’s mom decided she was ready to leave the brick house on Forrest Avenue and move to Paris. Paris, Kentucky, that is.
    Amy coerced me into going with her to