Free All the Single Ladies: A Novel by Dorothea Benton Frank

you’re right,” Carrie said. “I really don’t like that woman.”
    “She’d be hard to like,” Suzanne said.
    We rocked back and forth for a few moments, sort of mesmerized by the day’s end.
    “This is such an amazing place,” I said. “How long have you been living here, Suzanne?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe fifteen years?”
    “Really? Wow!” In my mind all I could do was quickly calculate and then wonder why Suzanne, who would’ve been about thirty-­six at the time, would want to come and live with her grandmother, who would’ve been right at eighty-­five. So I asked the question in the most diplomatic way I could. “Have you always lived in Charleston?”
    Suzanne and Carrie exchanged looks.
    Carrie said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Suzanne. Tell her! It’s not like you’re protecting a matter of national security!”
    Suzanne took a deep breath and refilled our glasses.
    “Okay,” she said, “did you ever make a bad judgment and totally screw up your life? And no matter what everyone told you, you just kept making one bad call after another?”
    “You mean, like when I married Mark, who left me with an infant to go live in the deep woods in the Northwest to become a doomsday prepper and live in an underground bunker?”
    Suzanne looked at Carrie and they burst out laughing. I joined in because what else could I do? It was just so ridiculous.
    “That’s a good one!” Carrie said.
    “Yeah,” Suzanne agreed. “ That kind of bad call.”
    “And he never sent any child support except for twenty dollars and a lottery ticket at Christmas?” I said.
    “Oh God,” Suzanne said. “That’s terrible.”
    “Awful!” Carrie said.
    “And your own mother never fails to remind you that she told you so and that you’re still an idiot?” I tossed a crouton into the salad just to emphasize how incredibly unlucky and naive I had been, and that in addition to the price I’d paid, I was, now and forever, the family dartboard.
    Suzanne couldn’t wipe the grin from her face. Her right hand was covering her mouth, and I could tell that the laughter she was holding back was in the tsunami range. She held her left hand in the air like a woman about to testify at a revival, took several gulps from the wineglass in her other hand, clunked it down on the table, and then she stood.
    “Okay,” she said, then whispered, “Before Miss Trudie shows up for her one ounce of sherry and her half pint of gin, I’ll give you the short version.”
    “We’re ready,” Carrie said, and winked at me.
    “So, after I got my MBA from Columbia—­”
    “You mean Carolina?” I asked.
    “No, I mean Columbia University in New York,” Suzanne stated.
    What was I thinking? Of course she went to Columbia University in New York. She probably had an IQ of two hundred and fifty. I completed my nursing and nutrition courses almost right in my backyard and never went anywhere. And almost all of the ­people I grew up with went to a college in South Carolina. I wondered at what age I would stop being insecure about not graduating from Harvard, which I would never have had the courage to attend even if it was free and they were begging me to come. Which they weren’t. Begging, that is, or offering me a free ride.
    “Oh!” I said. “I thought so but I wasn’t sure.”
    It was the tiniest of fibs.
    “Anyway, I went to work for FTD in Chicago.”
    “You mean the flower delivery company?”
    “Yep, that very one. Even then I was in love with flowers. I don’t know why I thought Chicago winters would be fun, but I did.”
    “Because if you’re from here you know what it’s like to live and die in hell,” Carrie said. “Freezing to death is an attractive alternative.”
    “Oh Lord!” I said, and giggled.
    “Anyway, I worked like a beast, climbed the ladder very quickly, and caught the attention of all the managers and officers.”
    “And one in particular!” Carrie said.
    Suzanne squinted at Carrie and put her