The Glass Wives Read Online Free PDF Page B

Evie’s bed with her long arms wrapped around Rex. “Your friend Isabel is downstairs waiting for you. I think she’s in the kitchen with Beth and Laney poking through boxes of cookies.”
    “’Kay.” Sophie stood and moved within an inch of Evie. “Where are you going to be?”
    “I’ll be down in a minute.” Or six.
    “Why not right now?”
    “I have to pee.”
    “I’ll wait for you.”
    “I promise, Soph, I’ll be right down. Don’t leave Isabel with a roomful of grown-ups and boys!” Evie crossed her eyes.
    Sophie smiled and hugged her mom long and hard before letting go. “Comin’, Issy,” Sophie yelled. She turned and looked at Evie, who nodded slowly. Sophie breathed deep and left the room. Evie heard her daughter run down the steps and jump the last few and land with a thud.
    Evie did not want to go back downstairs into the death-and-cookie zone. She smoothed her bed, tightened the comforter around the corners, punched the pillows, and stepped back to admire the floral bedscape. She needed something in her life in order. But Evie knew the oasis was nothing more than a mirage. She stared a moment longer, then closed her eyes and shook her head from side to side—her wish-I-was-magic movement, akin to Samantha Stephens’s nose-twitching on Bewitched . The past week resembled a nightmare, and she wanted to open her eyes and have it all disappear.
    It was the opposite of what Evie had wanted when she woke up the morning after Richard proposed. She had skipped to the dresser, fingers crossed that the black velvet box with a ring was still inside the top right-hand dresser drawer. He chuckled at her from his side of the bed. She closed her eyes, shook her head, opened her eyes, and, yes: the box, the ring, the fiancé—it was all real.
    This time when Evie opened her eyes, she saw Rex gnawing on a rawhide bone.
    *   *   *
    “How did last night go?” Laney said, sitting on the arm of the recliner and sliding into its depth.
    “What do you mean?”
    “What do I mean? I mean Nicole pulled into your driveway at ten o’clock, that’s what I mean. And then after she left—she came back!”
    “Are you spying on me?”
    “I’m not spying on you, I was awake. Well, Herb was awake and he woke me. You should have called. I would have rescued you.”
    “I sleep through everything, ” Beth said. “Was she okay?”
    “Was she okay?” Laney scrunched her eyebrows together. “There is nothing okay about showing up uninvited on someone’s doorstep.”
    “It was fine, no rescuing necessary. She just wanted to talk.”
    Laney squirmed.
    “She’s having such a hard time,” Beth said. “It was nice of you to talk to her.”
    Nice had nothing to do with it. “I’m not going to turn her away,” Evie said, although she wasn’t sure why that was true.
    “Why not?” Laney barked.
    “It’s called empathy,” Beth said without looking at her friends.
    “I don’t know what it’s called,” Evie said. “I just know that as much as I’d like to say it’s over, I know it’s not.”
    “Why do you have to go through losing Richard again—and with that woman?” Laney asked. “You’ve been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”
    “It’s not about her, it’s about the kids. Right, Ev?” Beth asked, hopeful.
    “It’s about doing what feels right at any given moment.”
    “Even if it seems crazy?” Laney asked.
    Evie just nodded.
    *   *   *
    The alarm clock buzzed and buzzed and buzzed. Evie reached for the snooze button but her hand patted something cool, slick, open, round, and … wet. A coffee mug? She opened her eyes. She wasn’t in bed; she was on the couch, lodged in the corner, magazine open on her chest, drool on her chin. The best part about having friends like Beth and Laney was that Evie could ask them to leave without offending them. And she had. That noise again. It wasn’t her alarm clock. What was that noise and why wasn’t someone shutting it off? The