Tuesday Night Miracles Read Online Free PDF

sat on a dozen times. And she shops at Kohl’s, for God’s sake, because Jane has seen that ugly brown jacket on about three hundred other women since the weather started turning.
    Grace has a very hard time getting her mind and eyes off the shoes. A quick image of her beautiful and always perfect mother standing in a pair of them, red with black tips, merges with her vision of this woman, this throwback to the sixties. What would my mother think of me now? Oh God, oh God, oh God! Grace has to swallow hard to flush her emotions.
    This woman ain’t her mama. The woman in front of her looks as if she stepped out of a glossy magazine. Maybe she’s Latin or Hispanic, with skin that looks like the smooth side of a candy-bar wrapper. Her hair is very, very short, and swirls of deep red are entwined with thick, tight black curls that someone with magic hands at an expensive salon must have cut. Grace has always wanted to cut her hair that short, but she’s afraid she’ll look like a bowling ball with black glasses and she can only afford to go to the local JCPenney salon. This woman is dressed to the nines; she obviously has money, and her beauty is the can’t-look-away kind of good looks that is also a little scary. What in the holy hell is she doing here? Could she be famous?
    As Grace tries to answer her question by looking down at the stilettos, someone again pushes through the door. There is a swirl of energy that appears in a leather jacket, jeans, a red sweater, and an attitude that immediately reminds Grace of an old gangster movie.
    Jane feels it, too, and she throws back her sculpted shoulders and gives the latest arrival a once-over that could start a fire without a match.
    This woman looks so Italian that she could have pasta in her jacket pocket. Her hair is the color of coal and her dark eyes are unusually large for a woman who probably tops off at just a few inches over five feet. She looks tough, with her long jaw-line, a swagger in her walk, and that city-girl aura that should be bottled and sold so that women who are afraid of the dark can get a little help. But this woman is also nervous. She keeps moving her head, and Jane guesses that her fingernails are bitten as low as they can go without exposing blood vessels. Maybe she’s the last standing cigarette smoker in this part of the world, although it’s likely if she’s from this part of town she probably started smoking on the way home from the local hospital nursery.
    Grace, much to her own surprise, has a wild urge to say something to comfort this woman. She’s nervous, too, but it looks like the newcomer could spring herself right out the window. That in itself is kind of odd, because the black leather jacket, boots, the way she sways, make her look like a middle-aged gang member, and Grace has had more than her share of nasty encounters with gang members at work.
    There is a pause when all of the women are breathing the same air, hanging on to the edges of their nervous tension as if it were their only lifeline, and silently wondering what in the world is going to happen next.
    “Are you both here for the party?” Kit asks as she tries without success to imagine what in the world these two suburban babes could possibly have done to get them sent to this meeting. One babe is really a babe. She looks familiar, but how would Kit know someone who has on all that makeup and looks so absolutely chic and put-together?
    Jane ignores the question. “Is there anyone else behind you?”
    “Only a mess of motorcycle thugs. I pushed them down the steps,” Kit answers, then slaps her left hand against her mouth. “Shit! I’m kidding. Is one of you the person in charge of this?”
    Grace and Jane both laugh at the same time.
    “Not me,” Grace says.
    Jane shakes her head and wonders if she should have had another glass or two of the red wine she left sitting on the counter.
    Kit fumbles in her pocket for a second and comes out with the same piece of