All You Have to Do Is Call by Kerri Maher EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Kerri Maher
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
PATTY
“This looks delicious!” Patty exclaimed as she took the fragrant Bundt cake
from Veronica, who was wearing one of her hippie skirts, which swayed in
time with her cascade of honey-hued hair and the musical stack of bangles
on her arm. For years, her dearest, oldest friend had smelled like lavender
and sounded like a wind chime, while Patty herself favored tailored yet
flippy and flirty skirts and dresses, outfits she admired from the windows of
Marshall Field’s or the pages of Cosmopolitan, a magazine she tried to hide
from her nine-going-on-thirteen-year-old daughter, Karen.
“It felt like a gingerbread kind of day,” said Veronica, and her friend’s
familiar smile was such a relief after the day she’d had.
It had started well enough. The morning had been cold and blue-sky
crisp, and she and the kids had sung along to “I’ll Be There” when it played
on the radio as they drove to St. Thomas the Apostle. Then the four of them
—Patty, Karen, Junie, and Tad—had crunched over the last of the fallen
leaves from the car into the cathedral for Sunday mass. Matt had skipped
today. He was doing that more and more recently, always using work as an
excuse not to go to church, or the PTA cocktail party, or Karen’s ballet
mini-recitals. Patty was getting worried; he’d never checked out like this
before, and she was constantly stopping herself from wondering, as she had
during mass, what might be keeping him.
Once church was over, the many hours of the day had been a forced
march of chores. It was impossible to overstate the relief Patty felt on
welcoming Vee and Doug and Kate into her home; tears of relief needled
her eyes. It had been so long since she’d seen Vee. Too long. More than a
month, which was unusual for them.
Thankfully, Matt was also happy to see them, and the kids were always
glad to add Kate to the mix. As the little ones ran off, Matt said to Doug,
“Beer?”
“I need one after that game this afternoon,” said Doug.
The Bears to the rescue. Patty was glad Matt could relax into some guy
time, but . . . she missed him. There were no two ways about it.
Alone in the kitchen, Veronica said to Patty, “Are you okay?”
“Is it that obvious?” Only to such an old friend, I hope.
Patty didn’t think they’d be friends now if she and Vee hadn’t forged
such a strong bond in that anemic seventh grade production of Macbeth,
where the two of them had stolen the show from Rachel Livingston and Ben
Milliken, cackling over their lobster pot of dry ice and scaring the bejeezus
out of everybody when they chanted “Double, double, toil and trouble / fire
burn and caldron bubble.”
Eighteen years later, Veronica and Doug lived in
the rapidly changing neighborhood of Hyde Park, and Patty and Matt in the
more traditional enclave of Kenwood—geographic choices that said nearly
everything about them. If she and Vee had simply met at a mixer for Lab
School parents, where Kate and Junie had been nursery school classmates,
they would have eyed each other with suspicion.
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