Free The Unfinished Child by Theresa Shea

great,” she continued. “I like your hair all one length like that.”
    “Slow down.” Elizabeth laughed. “You’re making me nervous. And, yes, I just got it cut last week.”
    “Well, it suits you. You look very stylish. As usual.”
    Marie envied Elizabeth’s ability to wear straight-legged jeans without looking like she’d been poured into them. Too many women wore them who shouldn’t. When she and Elizabeth were teenagers they’d developed their own code for assessing women’s clothes. If one of them spied someone in an unflattering outfit, she’d surreptitiously elbow the other and quietly say, Somebody lied to her .
    “And I like your sweater,” Marie added.
    A brief silence followed. The girls had gone downstairs with a cookie in each hand. Instinctively, Marie cocked one ear to listen. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Frances gave me a new cookbook, and I made some wacky tuna recipe out of it. I hope you’ll like it.”
    Elizabeth smiled knowingly. “Still trying to change you, is she?”
    “Always,” Marie said as she nodded. “Nobody knows how to do things like Frances.”
    “It must be hard being right all the time,” Elizabeth said.
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    “No, me neither.” Elizabeth picked up her coffee and moved to the sitting area beside the kitchen. The leather loveseat sighed softly when she sat down.
    “I’ll put the fire on,” Marie said. “This weather makes it impossible to heat the house.” She walked to the fireplace and flicked a switch. Flames immediately appeared around the logs.
    Marie nervously searched for a topic of conversation. She never used to have to fill in the silences because there had never been any. Best friends were always comfortable together, even if they didn’t tell each other the truth all the time. Some things just had to be overlooked and forgiven, for the sake of friendship.
    No friendship was ever entirely equal—Marie knew that. In all relationships, someone always had the upper hand. In the early years, Marie had been the one in charge; later, though, when boys became interesting, things flipped. She had never told Elizabeth how much it had stung to see the way men’s eyes always slid quickly over Marie’s plump figure to linger on Elizabeth’s lean yet shapely one. In university, when they’d walk into a bar, Marie had seen the raw hopefulness in men’s eyes when they saw Elizabeth, and she’d also seen the shadow of disappointment when they saw her tagging along behind, even though she pulled in her stomach and stood straight to make herself look slimmer. It was hard to be second fiddle all the time, to be the one men settled for but didn’t really seek out. It certainly hadn’t helped when Elizabeth had ended up with Ron.
    But Marie had sucked it up because that’s what friends do. Isn’t it? Every friendship had its small jealousies and irritations. And sometimes the tables turned and the person who’d always been doing the envying was suddenly the one who was envied. It happened that way when Marie had her children. Then it was Elizabeth’s turn to suck it up.
    “Aren’t you having any coffee?” Elizabeth asked.
    “No, not now.” Marie dropped her gaze and felt her friend’s eyes studying her.
    “You look kind of tired. Are you sleeping well?” Elizabeth asked. “You’ve got circles around your eyes. How’s work?”
    “Work’s fine.” Marie shrugged. “You know, the same old stuff. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about accounting. I certainly don’t.” She had completed a course by correspondence, working on it when the girls were in school. It certainly wasn’t a passion of hers. In truth, she’d never really had a strong desire to do anything. Not like her sister, for example, who had always been driven and already had two degrees.
    Having children had freed her from finding the perfect career. What a relief that had been. But even when her kids were small, the idea that she would be expected