Free Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman Page B

happened, and although Jeannie’s family moved to Florida, never to return to Monroe again, Lindsay’s mother continues to bring wreaths of flowers on the first of every month, bands of everlasting and sweetbrier and roses that she twists through the fence, unaware of whether or not there are thorns.
    Every time Charlotte drives past, she remembers that she’s lucky. She was supposed to go with them that night, but her mother made her stay home because she was recovering from the flu and had a slight fever. Charlotte thinks about that whenever she’s home alone at night. She thinks about it right now. Good fortune can turn out to be bad, Charlotte knows that for a fact, and the luckiest among us can be ruined by chance: a simple wrong turn, a metal fence, a man who drives through town on a cold, foggy night.
    In the harsh bathroom light it’s impossible not to notice the toll today has taken on Jorie. Still, she’s beautiful. even now. Charlotte understands why Ethan fell in love with her the first time he saw her. Charlotte herself was standing right next to Jorie, but she might as well have been invisible. She still remembers Ethan’s expression as he approached: the way he wanted Jorie was all over his face, his attraction as obvious as a drowning man’s prayer for solid land.
    â€œDo you ever think of what your life might have been like if we hadn’t gone to the Safehouse that night?” Charlotte asks. They’re headed down to the kitchen, so that Charlotte can make them a pot of tea. “We could have gone bowling instead, or to a movie. One changed plan and your whole life would have been different.”
    â€œIt would never have happened that way,” Jorie says with conviction.
    â€œYou think you were meant to be with him? No matter what?”
    â€œI know I was.” Jorie sounds much more like herself now. She always had an assured manner, even when they were girls. That was one of the things Charlotte envied, how Jorie never seemed torn apart by doubt. “He hadn’t decided to stay in Monroe until the night we met. Did you know that? He was on his way to New Hampshire because a friend of his was working in Portsmouth and told him there was a lot of work to be found there. He was in Monroe for exactly one night.”
    After the tea is ready, Charlotte decides to fix her friend some toast as well, having rightly assumed that Jorie hasn’t thought to eat supper. She suggests that Jorie go to the living room and lie down on the couch; Charlotte will bring in a tray. While the bread is browning, Charlotte takes the opportunity to tidy up the kitchen. She’s glad she hasn’t mentioned that her doctor insisted upon a biopsy; Jorie has more than enough to worry about. Charlotte refuses to think about her own problems as she washes out the cereal bowls and sweeps up the last shards of the broken coffee cup and gets the silver tray she gave them as a wedding present. She will think about this house, instead, about this kitchen. Everything here is top of the line, hand-crafted cabinets, a stainless steel stove that would suffice for a restaurant, slate countertops that shine with silvery mica. Ethan must have gotten it all at cost, but anyone can tell he designed this kitchen for the woman he loved. It’s the curved arches of wood above the windows, fine carpentry that must have taken weeks, that speaks of his devotion. It’s the inlaid pattern of light and dark squares on the floor, fitted with such care that the wood appears seamless, black and white bark grown together on the very same tree.
    When she really thinks about it, Charlotte knows nothing about Ethan before that night when they first caught sight of him in the Safehouse. He arrived out of nowhere with no baggage and no tales to tell. Whatever he’d said about himself they would have gladly believed, for the past hadn’t mattered much back then. Charlotte and Jorie were both