The Girls of Tonsil Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

so bad for me, but I thought we were going to have to shoot Andie to put us all out of our misery.”
    “What about Suzanne?” I was pretty sure if Suzanne woke up with night sweats, she’d have to go into rehab.
    “She had a hysterectomy when she was forty, remember? It threw her into instant menopause, but hormone therapy’s worked great for her.”
    Silence hummed between us, then Jean said, her voice as coaxing as if she were talking to a child, “Come on, Vinnie. What’s wrong?”
    The soft sympathy in her voice was the last straw. Before I could even draw a deep breath, I was sobbing and speaking in a rush of hiccups. “I don’t know, Jean. It’s like there’s no reason for living anymore. I never envied you guys having kids before, but now I do. I don’t have anything without Mark.”
    “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
    “I rattle around this brownstone all by myself except for Attila—”
    “Who?”
    As abruptly as the spate of tears had started, it ended, the sobs segueing clumsily into giggles as uncontrollable as the sobs had been. “It’s what Suzanne calls my housekeeper. Archie’s just the slightest bit...er...militant about screening my phone calls.”
    Jean laughed, and I was glad I’d called her just because the sound of her laughter is enough to brighten anyone’s day. “Oh, Jeannie,” I said, “please come to Maine with us. We’d have such fun.”
    “Oh, phooey, you all just want me to cook because you’re afraid you’ll poison yourselves.”
    She was still laughing, but it struck me that maybe that’s what she really thought. It also struck me that she was right.
    We’d counted on her to rescue us from our cooking limitations of canned soup and frozen entrees. We’d been counting on her to rescue us for forty years.
    “Nope,” I said stoutly. “I’m taking along that cookbook series we published a couple of years ago and we’ll all learn to use it.”
    “Oh, good heavens.” There was another little silence. “Maybe for a few days. A long weekend,” said Jean. “David’s got a golf trip coming up. I know he’d like not worrying about me being home alone. And, believe me, after I send in this book, I’m ready for a break.”
    It irritated me that she always put David’s and her children’s needs before her own, but the thought crossed my mind that if Mark were only here, I’d put his needs before anyone else’s forever and ever.
    “You think about it,” I said. “We’d love it if you came.”
    Silence again, then, “Okay,” she promised. “I’ll think about it, but not till I get this book done and to my editor. I’ll call you Sunday.”
    I got to the office early and stayed late, making large inroads into clearing my desk in preparation for devoting a month to Andie’s book.
    Back at the brownstone, I ate the dinner Archie had left in the oven for me, took a shower, and went to bed. Although I consider myself a morning person, I don’t believe morning starts at four-thirty a.m. I was exhausted.
    The clock beside the bed read eleven-seventeen when the phone rang. I’d been dreaming, I think, because when I picked up the receiver, I fully expected to hear Mark on the other end.
    But it wasn’t him, would never be him again. Instead, it was Suzanne, speaking in an almost unrecognizable voice, one that made me sit up and say sharply, “Suzanne? Are you okay?” God, how often we said that to each other, we girls of Tonsil Lake. Are you okay? Are you all right?
    “I’m fine.”
    That’s what we always said, even when the damned sky was falling. “Are you okay?” they asked after Mark died, and I said I was fine even though I knew I’d never be fine again.
    And Suzanne wasn’t fine now. “Talk to me,” I ordered.
    “I really don’t have anything to say.”
    I could hear her swallowing, her glass clinking against the telephone. “Suzanne, what are you doing?”
    “I just”—her voice faded away, then came back strong—“just wanted to say