The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club Read Online Free PDF

excuse was a yen for a deep-fried lunch and a yearning to put on Malone’s much-washed St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt and while away the afternoon, working on an abstract painting I’d started a few days before—I flashed a tired smile, said, “Okay, love you, bye-bye,” and started walking.
    I’d taken no more than two steps before she tossed out a verbal lasso that roped me faster than a three-legged calf.
    “Oh, but, sugar, Annabelle’s expectin ’ you. She’s excited as could be about seeing you again. How long’s it been? Since before you deserted your mother and ran off to that art school in the Midwest?” My back turned, I froze, waiting for her to finish. “It’d be a real shame if you didn’t reconnect. Friendships are so very precious. A girl never knows when a day could be her last,” she added, laying it on thicker than her Laura Mercier mascara.
    Good grief, I thought, before the realization of what she’d said truly hit me, smack in the solar plexus.
    Annabelle?
    I only knew one girl with that name: a chubby brunette with freckles who seemed forever on the verge of tears. We’d both been shipped off to Camp Longhorn for four straight summers, during those awkward years leading up to puberty. She was always screwing up, crapping out on activities and forgetting to say “please, sir” and “thank you, ma’am,” which left her with few of the precious merits we accumulated as chips on our shower rods and used to buy goodies from the camp store, like silver James Avery charms and nylon backpacks. Needless to say, I’d slipped her a few of mine to keep her from bawling.
    She endlessly complained, about the heat, the bugs, the competitions. She’d earned a host of nicknames for her actions—or, rather, inaction—like “Dumb Belle” and “Ding Dong Belle.” Those were the kinder ones. The rest, uttered behind her back, ridiculed her weight, not her tendency to flake out. It wasn’t part of the Camp Longhorn spirit to belittle a camper, but that didn’t stop it from happening.
    We’d both played wallflowers at the Thursday night dances—I was gawky and thin, and she was bigger than most of the boys—so neither of us was very popular with the opposite sex. When we got a little older—say, closing in on twelve—she used to fake menstrual cramps so often to get out of activities that someone had once filled her bunk with Midol.
    Naw, it couldn’t be her. Could it?
    “Annabelle Meade from Camp Longhorn?” I voiced the name aloud, sure I was mistaken.
    “That’s right, sugar. She’s done so well for herself, despite everything. Just wait till you see her. She looks fabulous for a girl of her proportions.”
    That coming from a woman who thought a size eight was tipping the scales.
    “You won’t recognize her. She’s come a long way from the child who used to throw a tantrum when her au pair picked her up from boarding school and plunked her on the charter bus for Austin.”
    So it was that Annabelle Meade.
    Wow. It had been ages.
    I turned around, sure that I was making a mistake by not flying like a bat out of hell toward the shuttle. But, Mother had piqued my curiosity, just as she’d intended. Much as I liked to believe she didn’t understand me, she knew me too damned well.
    “So, this place holding the reception belongs to Annabelle? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
    “If you’d only read the paper once in a while, sugar, you’d know all about it. Janet Graham did a huge feature on it for the PCP .”
    By “PCP,” she didn’t mean angel dust. She meant the Park Cities Press , where Janet Graham helmed the prominent “Society” section. The Wall Street Journal , it wasn’t, but it didn’t pretend to be.
    “Your old camp friend swooped in from the Hill Country and purchased a piece of prime real estate on Forest Lane a while back. That’s where she built Belle Meade. She opened its doors six months ago, and already has a full house and a waiting list a mile