Free Yesterday by Fern Michaels Page A

again.”
    “She’s almost thirty years old, buddy. She was probably out there doing girl things. Go to bed, Bode. Call me in the morning. If I don’t hear anything from you, I’ll pick you up at the airport as scheduled.”
    “Yeah, but I told her Brie was there. She should have been anxious to see one of her best friends.” When there was no response, Bode reared back, a look of mystification on his face. “He hung up,” he muttered to no one in particular. He flopped back on the bed, the receiver hanging loosely over the side. He heard an operator squawk her disapproval. He pushed the offending instrument onto the floor and rolled over, his fists beating the scrunched-up pillows.
    One of the pillows ripped at the seams, feathers spiraling upward. The curtains at the windows billowed inward, creating a breeze that sent the feathers in every direction. Bode thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He slapped at his knees, laughing until tears streamed down his cheeks. He was still laughing when he fumbled his way out to the kitchen to make himself some coffee.
    His memories attacked him again as he waited for the coffee to drip into the pot. Who should he think about? Mama Pearl who loved him with all her heart? He loved her with all his heart, too. Of the four of them he was the only one allowed to call her Mama Pearl. That was because he didn’t have a mother and the others did. Not that the girls’ mothers were any great shakes in the maternal department. Still, blood was blood.
    Tomboy Brie whose mother didn’t give a hoot what she did or when she did it. Brie with the bruises and welts she sloughed off and never complained about. She’d even got into a girls’ cat fight over him one day. Well, by God, he wasn’t going to think about that .
    He’d given Brie a bracelet when she was fifteen. He didn’t know her wrist turned green until Sela told him. It was Sela who also told him how Brie had put nail polish on it and when it fell apart, had Scotch-taped it to the back of her blue diary—another present from Bode.
    Bode’s thoughts homed back to Brie’s fight in the schoolyard. Things changed among the girls after that. Callie and Sela banded together, but they didn’t exclude Brie. Again, it was Sela who told him Callie was jealous of all the time Brie spent with him. He’d tried to explain that they had jobs, but both Callie and Sela pooh-poohed that aside as if it was nothing.
    Brie with the skinned elbows and knees. Brie with the freckles and patched coveralls and scruffy sneakers. Brie was his friend. Brie was that one true person in the whole of the world who would always be there for him. If he needed her, he knew she’d drop everything and ask questions later. If. And he would do the same thing for her. How ironic that neither of them ever asked the other.
    Callie and Sela were a different story. Oh yeah, they’d be there for him, too, but only after they had asked for a million details. He finished his coffee and poured out more. He stared at the cup. He didn’t even remember the coffee dripping, much less pouring himself the first cup.
    It was time to put all his memories away and get on with his life. That meant leaving those nearest and dearest behind him—something he should have done years ago. To this day he didn’t know why he hadn’t set up shop somewhere else. Was it Mama Pearl or the girls? Both.
    Who was he—really? Maybe it was time for him to find out. Maybe it was time for him to do a lot of things he’d shelved so he could take responsibility for what he considered to be his family. And they were his family: Mama Pearl, Brie, Callie, and Sela.
    Each of them had her own life now, and he no longer had to be in the background waiting. If that was what he’d been doing these past years, then he had wasted those years because the four women hadn’t needed him at all. Maybe he needed them. Maybe that was why he hadn’t left. He needed to be needed.
    If a person