The Hurricane Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page A

all ordered while Mary Beth seasoned and stirred the pasta around in the big ceramic bowl that had been a part of the kitchen all my life. Funny how something that seemed so insignificant, just an old bowl with faded glazed stripes, could trigger so many memories. When I was really young, we used it for cookie dough, cake batters, boiled peanuts, potato salad, and now apparently, not for pasta primavera, but for pasta salad . But when I was little and my mother pulled out that big bowl, it meant company and it meant that for a few hours at least my family would do its best to look and act normal. Ah, the good old days.
    “One of these days I’m going to rob a bank and go to all the great restaurants in Charleston and order whatever I want,” Mary Beth said.
    “I’m going to rob a bank and get the heck out of here,” I said. “Or I’m going to marry Porter Galloway and live happily ever after with him in the White House. Maybe.”
    We clinked the sides of our glasses toasting our very uncertain futures, took a sip, and sighed.
    “Either way, we have a plan.” Mary Beth was always the optimist.
    “Some plan,” I said with a grunt.
    “Want to eat outside?” she said.
    “Why not? We can watch the harbor.”
    So we piled pasta on our plates and filled our glasses with ice and swill and made our way out to the porch juggling silverware and linens. We may have been young and broke but we had style. And standards. Frat boys ate without place mats and napkins. Not us.
    The heat of the day had broken and the horizon was beginning to turn red. There was nothing more beautiful in all the world than sunset on Sullivans Island. But considering I hadn’t really been anywhere outside of Charleston since I was like fifteen when I didn’t care about things like sunsets, I could’ve been wrong. But it sure seemed beautiful to me. And romantic.
    We set up our places and sat at the old glass-top table, taking the first bites. It was delicious.
    “Wow, this is so good,” I said. “Maybe you really ought to be a chef. You know? I mean, really !”
    “Yeah, and old Larson would kick my butt! This is good.”
    Larson Smythe, her father, the Pentecostal preacher in the hills of Tennessee, didn’t really believe in college educations for women. Her mother, Agnes the Weirdly Timid, played the pump organ in his church on Sundays while the congregation got moved by the spirit and spoke in tongues. Small congregation. Large snake box. Scary. He owned and ran the local hardware store in their town and Agnes, well, Agnes was a wonderful homemaker and cook but never had any prospects of a career, beyond handling the books for Smythe’s Hardware. Larson would not have heard of it and Agnes wouldn’t have asked. They lived quietly. (Boring.) It’s not like their town was crawling with opportunity anyway.
    “Probably. But your momma’s a great cook. You must get it from her.”
    When we were in college, I used to go home with Mary Beth on long weekends so I knew this to be a fact. There was always a cake on the table, soup on the stove, and biscuits in the oven.
    “Humph. I think the only thing I got from them was far, far away.”
    “What were you supposed to do? Work at the Dairy Queen for the rest of your life and marry some no-chin boy named Skeeter? You’d have had total brain rot if you’d gone home after college.”
    “Truly. At least I do some subbing once in a while. That keeps Larson’s nerves in check,” she said. “Makes him think the tuition was worth it. So what happened last night? Did you get career counseling again?”
    “In a major way. In front of the world. While my butt was allegedly hanging out of that dress, according to my mother. Also in front of the world. They ragged on my job and my salary. So embarrassing. I mean, Mary Beth? How am I going to become a famous artist from here? This island has never produced a famous anything. I mean, we had Edgar Allan Poe here for like one year. Big whoop. He