Free The Friends We Keep by Holly Chamberlin

instead of the law? His considerable talent was being wasted.
    I made a bit of a choking sound. John looked at me. I smiled and said, “It’s a bit thick in here, don’t you think? The air, I mean.”
    â€œI’m surprised you don’t have kids, Eva,” John said abruptly.
    â€œWhy are you surprised?” I replied with a casual lift of my shoulder. “Lots of people don’t have kids. You, for example. Unless you’ve got an illegitimate son or daughter stashed away somewhere.”
    â€œNo children that I know of,” he said evenly. “And do people really use the term ‘illegitimate’ anymore?”
    â€œI’m surprised, too, Eva,” Sophie said, turning to me. “Back in college you used to talk about having two or three children. You were sure you’d marry an artist, maybe a sculptor, and live in a big loft with all handmade furniture and a big dog. Remember?”
    A dog? Did I drop acid in college? “No,” I stated firmly. “I don’t remember.”
    â€œDo you think about having kids someday?” Sophie asked John. “I think you’d make a wonderful father.”
    â€œI’m not opposed to the idea,” he said carefully.
    â€œAh, I can see it now,” I said. “He’ll play around until he’s sixty, then marry some thirty-year-old to bear the children he won’t live long enough to see graduate college. I suppose you think that teenagers will be a comfort to you in your old age?”
    Sophie looked uncomfortable. She took too big a sip of her wine, reached for her napkin, and coughed politely into it.
    â€œWhere is your sister these days, Eve?” John asked, pointedly ignoring my comment.
    â€œEva.”
    â€œEva,” he said, and I thought I detected a bit of amusement at my expense in his tone.
    â€œMaura lives in Michigan. She’s on husband number two. She has four kids, a tiny house, a lousy job as a cashier, and yet she’s happy. At least, she claims to be.”
    Sophie, recovered, looked puzzled. “Why would you doubt her?”
    Because it’s hardly the kind of life I would want for myself, I thought. Call it supreme self-centeredness but it was hard for me to imagine my own sister being content with what I considered to be such a crabbed life. It made me angry somehow that she didn’t want more, that she was so entirely different from me. But I wasn’t sure why I needed her to be someone she was not.
    I shrugged in reply to Sophie’s last question.
    â€œDo you see her much?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” I said, wondering suddenly when it was I had last ventured to Michigan. Three years ago? Four? It had only been for a night, anyway; I’d gone to Ann Arbor to visit a potential client. I’d stayed at a Hampton Suites. Maura, who’d come into town to meet me for dinner, saw the little kitchenette and pronounced it paradise. “In fact, I’ve never met her youngest. I think she’s about two now.”
    â€œOh,” Sophie said. “That’s too bad.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to do out there in the sticks,” I said by way of explanation, “so visiting has no appeal. And they can’t afford to come here unless I put them up in a hotel, and Maura’s husband won’t allow that, something about his manly pride, so . . .” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We were never close. Probably due to the age difference.”
    â€œAge matters less when you’re an adult,” Sophie said. “I mean, I don’t have siblings of my own but I can imagine.”
    â€œI’m surprised you’re not more involved with your sister’s kids,” John remarked then. “I can’t get enough of my nieces and nephews. I do my best to visit every week. I don’t want to just be the guy who shows up at graduations with a check.”
    â€œWell,” I stated flatly,