Free The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares

she wasn’t.
    Carmen’s eyes were narrowed like laser beams on her mother’s face. “Never mind?
Never mind?
Are you joking?”
    Christina cast a longing look at the door. “I’ve got to call Mimmy, honey. It’s already afternoon.”
    “You’re not going to tell us?” Carmen looked as if she were ready to explode.
    Christina’s eyes darted around nervously. “There’s nothing to tell. I was mistaken. I was thinking about someone else. It’s not important.” She snapped her mouth shut and left the kitchen in a hurry. She knew as well as anyone that Carmen didn’t let a person off the hook easily.
    “It’s not important?” Lena echoed faintly.
    Carmen looked at Lena knowingly. “That obviously means it is.”
     
    “Who’s Eugene?”
    Lena let it drop quietly between dinner and dessert as her mother loaded the plates into the dishwasher. Lena was clearing the table. It was just the two of them in the kitchen. Effie was at a friend’s, and their dad was reading the newspaper in the dining room.
    “What?” Ari turned around.
    “Who’s Eugene?”
    Right away Lena knew she was causing a disturbance.
    “Why are you asking me that?” Her mother was holding a plate in each hand.
    “I just . . . want to know.”
    “Who told you about him?”
    “Nobody,” Lena said. If her mother wasn’t giving any information, then she didn’t feel like giving any either. Besides, she didn’t want to get Carmen’s mom in trouble.
    Ari’s face took on a frustrated, unpolished look. She seemed to be calculating in a hurry. “Well, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
    “Then why are you whispering?”
    Lena hadn’t meant to torture her mother, but that was how it was working out.
    “I’m not,” she said, also in a whisper.
    Lena stopped. This was feeling a little out of control. She wanted information, badly. The harder it was to get it, the more critical it seemed. On the other hand, the look on her mother’s face scared her a little.
    Lena’s dad ambled into the kitchen. “How about some cheesecake?” he asked agreeably.
    Lena’s mother cast her a look that said, in no uncertain terms,
Do not open your mouth or I will ground you until you are an old woman
.
    “I’m going upstairs,” Lena informed the granite countertop.
    “Nothing sweet?” her dad asked. They had a common love of dessert.
    “Not tonight,” she said.
    “Do you think Mom had a boyfriend before Dad?” she asked Effie when she appeared in Lena’s room awhile later.
    “No. Nobody important.”
    “What makes you so sure?” Lena asked.
    “Because she would’ve told us about it,” Effie reasoned.
    “Maybe not. She doesn’t tell us everything.”
    Effie rolled her eyes. “Mom has a very boring life. Maybe there isn’t anything to tell.”
    Lena thought for a while. “I think Mom had a boyfriend named Eugene. I think she lived here and he lived in Greece, and I think she might have really loved him.”
    Effie raised her eyebrows. “You do, do you?”
    Lena nodded.
    “Well, I think you should stick with your own tragic love story.”
     
    “David wants to take us both out to dinner,” Christina announced that evening, as though Ed McMahon had just arrived with the giant novelty check.
    “Why?”
    “Car
men
!” Christina was too happy to be mad. “Because he wants to meet you!”
    Christina had the Weight Watchers cookbook open on the counter and onions sizzling in a pan.
    “When?”
    “Tomorrow night?” Christina suggested.
    “I’m going to the movies with Lena.”
    “Thursday?”
    “Baby-sitting.”
    “Friday?”
    Carmen studied her mother in annoyance. Usually a person got the hint by the third try. “I’m . . . going out with Porter,” she said, satisfied with her answer even though it was a lie. Her mother wasn’t the only one in the world with a boyfriend.
    Christina’s eyes turned from disappointed to pleased. “Bring him! We’ll go out, all four of us!”
    “David wants to take us out to