Free Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder by Lisa Verge Higgins

eye on it.’ ‘She’s got a great eye.’
     ‘I’ll keep my eyes peeled.’ ‘Keep your eye on the ball.’” Becky shook her head. “You know what? I am turning into Ms. Bloody
     Cranky Pants. I think I’ll sit down too.”
    Monique kept her place by the window and took solace in the momentary solitude. She gazed upon the iconic British clock tower
     and Westminster Abbey as well. As the pod began its westerly descent, she noted the surprisingly green, wooded areas of central
     London, a long chain of parks whose names she probably should remember from her college days, when she was obsessed with British
     lit. She wondered which of the green spaces were St. James’s Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens. How wonderful it would have
     been if she and Lenny could have walked those green spaces, as they’d once walked in the little manicured park behind the
     oncology building.
    She bent forward and let her forehead rest against the glass, looking down through the spindly white scaffolding to the silver
     ribbon of the Thames. She knew she shouldn’t summon Lenny. This place was too busy, too public, and too full of pattering
     children’s feet and the loud chatter of nearby German tourists. She might embarrass herself. She might say something out loud.
    She closed her eyes nonetheless, mentally casting about in search of that soft, warm, oh-so-familiar-glow. She ached to sense
     him standing just behind her, lingering.
    Are you here with me, Lenny?
    An image bloomed in her mind of Lenny in that hospital bed, crinkling the newspaper as he lowered it. He gazed at her over
     the edge of a pair of reading glasses. Monique suppressed a bubble of amusement. Lenny never did admit he needed those glasses.
     But he’d never had any qualms about borrowing hers, perching them on the end of his nose though the frames were studded with
     rhinestones.
    Sometime later the sensation of a hand on her arm brought Monique back to the present. Judy stood beside her, silently drawing
     Monique’s attention to the sinking landscape. The pod had dropped below the level of the rooftops. A crowd waited by the doors
     as it slowed to the landing. The doors whooshed opened. The ride was over.
    Usually Monique loved checking things off lists. Usually, she loved the sense of accomplishment that followed. Now she ushered
     her friends ahead of her down the ramp so they would not glimpse the worry on her face. She skimmed her fingers along the
     railing, prepared to grip it should she sense a sudden, deep-bodied chill or should her knees completely fail her. Then she
     forced herself to imagine the list as she mentally inked a checkmark by the first item.
    She exhaled a long, slow breath and waited. She monitored her vitals, seeking aches, soreness, a sudden drop in blood pressure.
     But her breathing remained calm, her pulse strong. Her heart did not grow leaden in her chest. In fact her heart felt oddly
     feather-light, and not because some part of it had just cracked and broken away. She felt weightless…unburdened. A breeze
     swept off the Thames as she mentally searched for the source of this unexpected buoyancy. The sudden gust swept her braids
     off her shoulders and brushed the nape of her neck.
    The sensation was not unlike a kiss.
    Monique stopped in her tracks. Tourists elbowed by her, forcing her against the rail. She ran her fingers across the back
     of her neck.
    Across her face crept a soft, slow smile.

CHAPTER SIX
    W anderlust.
    The word—straight from the German—bubbled up inside Judy. It churned along with hundreds of other foreign words and expressions
     that had sputtered in her head since she’d boarded the London-Brussels train amid the business class of Europe.
    Becky sat across from her, closing her eyes behind the amber sunglasses as the French country sunshine poured in through the
     window. Monique perched in the seat beside Becky, her face buried in an Amsterdam guidebook, making occasional grunting noises
     as