Sisterhood Everlasting Read Online Free PDF Page B

it, and so did he.
    Lena and Drew were waiting for the elevator in the lobby of her building twenty minutes later when she thought of something. “I’m going to check my mailbox,” she said. He let the elevator come and go without complaint as she fished around for her key and opened the slot. There was the regular junk and a thick yellow envelope from Tibby. She ripped it open with a tingle of excitement, both welcome and not.
    She drifted back toward the elevator as she pulled out the contents. The first page was so unexpected it took her a long time to figure out what it was. Tibby’s handwriting, messier than usual, was scrawled along the bottom. “Here’s an insane idea,” she’d written. “Please say you can do it.”
    It seemed to be a receipt for an eticket in Lena’s name, for a round-trip flight from New York. It had cost $603 and had been paid for with Tibby’s credit card. The departure date was October 28, less than four weeks away, and the return date was six days later.
    The page behind was a similar ticket for Carmen and the one behind that for Bee, in her case departing from and returning to San Francisco.
    “I’ll be there a day early and will be waiting for you at the airport,” Tibby had written at the bottom of the last page. Under that: “Lena, email me when you get this!” And under that: “Please, you three, say you will come!”
    The most shocking thing was the destination: Fira, the principal city of Santorini.

    If there was one thing Bridget was good at, it was riding her bike uphill. That was what she was thinking as she conquered the hill at Duboce and Divisadero by the late-afternoon light.
    Besides some pictures and a few keepsakes from her friends, the one possession that really meant something to Bridget was her bike. It was sturdy, old-fashioned in style but modern in function. Eric had gotten it for her twenty-fifth birthday, and she’d spent the next four years tricking it out. She wasn’t very artistic, but she’d decorated it with bright enamel paints and silk flowers. It was the one thing, besides a duffel bag of clothes, she’d brought with her to California.
    She was known throughout the Mission and the Castro as the blond girl with flowers on her bike. She felt some pride when she overheard neighbors or shopkeepers talking about her. “There is no hill in this town that girl can’t bike to the top of.”
    In the old days, in high school and college, her physical accomplishments had been obvious and easily recognized. She scored the most goals, had the most assists, ran the fastest dash, did the most push-ups. She operated in the safe and structured universe of a high-level soccer team, where even when you did badly it was still a game. That was what she was thinking about as she glided down alongside Dolores Park and turned in to her street without using her brakes.
    The problem with that universe was that it ended, and then it extruded you into the chaos of a post-team existence. That chaos appeared to be ruled by people who were good at talking and liked to stay inside. Bridget found herself seeking little ways to measure herself that gave her even a faint feeling of how it used to be. Like the hills.
    As she coasted down her street she saw Eric waiting on the front steps. It was unusual for him to get home before her.
    He stood up to kiss her and held out a letter.
    “For me?” she said, kissing him an extra time.
    “Yes,” he said. “It’s from Tibby.”
    “Really? No way.” She flipped it over excitedly and looked at the return address.
    “When was the last time you heard from Tibby?”
    Bridget shook her head. “A while.” She considered. “On her birthday I emailed her a picture I found of her in her Wallman’s smock and she wrote back a few lines.” She turned the envelope over again. “Why did she send it to me care of you at your office?”
    “Maybe because she knows we have no fixed address.”
    “Yes, we do,” Bridget said, suddenly