The Best of Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

cream butter on thick and sprinkling on a perfect combination of cinnamon and sugar before carrying it to her room on a tray to savor slowly.
    Now she put down her cup of coffee and tuned back in to the board meeting—or as she’d once referred to it in an e-mail, the “bored meeting.” Luckily she’d caught that Freudian slip before blasting the message to the group.
    “So we have venue and entertainment taken care of for the auction,” Delores Debonis, the chairwoman, was saying. She was in Group B, the spouses, but you’d never know it by the way she obsessively checked her iPhone. She tapped her pen against the table. “Flowers. Who wants to handle flowers?”
    “I will,” Pauline said, just as another woman at the end of the table spoke the identical words.
    The other woman deferred to Pauline with a gracious nod. “Please. I’ll find something else.”
    “Thank you.” Pauline smiled back, just as graciously, and swallowed a yawn.
    “Food,” Delores Debonis said loudly, and Pauline started, thinking for a second that Delores was demanding a snack. “We’ve received bids from three catering companies with proposed menus for passed hors d’oeuvres and the seated meal. I’ve made copies for everyone.”
    Delores reached for the papers in front of her and handed them out.
    “Aren’t stuffed mushroom caps kind of . . . I don’t know . . . nineteen nineties?” someone said, wrinkling her nose as if one of the unfashionable fungi had materialized in front of her.
    “I agree,” another woman added. “It shows a lack of creativity. The first caterer isn’t impressing me.”
    A third woman cleared her throat. “I’m worried we won’t have enough passed hors d’oeuvres. Six selections for two hundred people isn’t much variety. And what about the vegetarians? I only see two non-meat or seafood options.”
    Pauline allowed her mind to drift again, as she did so often during these meetings. She began to think about what wouldhappen the day after the auction, when they’d leave for Dwight’s birthday trip to Jamaica along with his college friends—people Pauline barely knew and probably had nothing in common with.
    She’d made a massive mistake.
    What had come over her? Why had she blurted out the idea the moment it popped into her head, without even sleeping on it first? Now it was far too late to cancel the trip; the invitations had been delivered, and everyone had sent back gushing acceptances. She was going to be stuck spending an entire week with these people.
    “So no mushroom caps,” Delores was saying. Tap, tap, tap went her pen. “Are we in agreement about the goat cheese—Pauline?”
    She hadn’t realized she’d stood up until she heard Delores speak her name.
    “Are you unwell?” Delores asked as every head swiveled to look at Pauline. “You’re so pale.”
    “It’s nothing,” Pauline said. She pressed her hands together to camouflage their sudden trembling. “Excuse me a moment.”
    She walked down the hallway to a bathroom, locked the door behind her, and studied her reflection in the large oval mirror. Delores was right; she did look even paler than usual.
    She might as well get this over with, she thought as she slipped her skirt down over her hips and sat on the toilet. And there it was again: a streak of red on her panty liner. She stared at it, wondering how much longer she could blame it on Dwight’s traveling, on bad timing, on it being harder for a woman to get pregnant after she turned thirty.
    Dwight wanted children. It wasn’t something they’d discussed at length, but an older woman who’d been friends with Dwight’s mother had asked about it at their wedding reception, and he’d said, “Of course.” As if it was such a given that his responsehad required no thought at all. Dwight and the woman had turned to look at her, and she’d smiled. “One or two, definitely,” she’d said. “Or three or four,” Dwight had said, and the old woman had