Free Four Friends by Robyn Carr Page B

compromise!”
    He just looked at her. “Sonja, you can’t change this. And you haven’t heard a thing I’ve said in ten years. You need to just carry on, be yourself and let me go.”
    And then he left.
    * * *
    Gerri walked out of her house at the crack of dawn, holding her coffee cup. Andy emerged from across the street at about the same time. Sonja had not been early; Gerri made a mental note to thank her for that. Sonja was go, go, go all the time; she seemed to see it as her mission to keep her friends in shape, moving all the time. Gerri and Andy met in the middle of the street. “Where’s little Mary Sunshine?” Andy asked.
    “Sleeping in?” Gerri asked with a short laugh.
    BJ came out of her house down the street and the women waved at each other. BJ began stretching for her run while the other women wandered up Sonja’s walk.
    “We could sit on the planter box, finish our coffee,” Andy suggested.
    “Yeah, but I’d rather get this over with,” Gerri said.
    “You doing okay?” Andy asked.
    “Ach,” she said with a noncommittal shrug. “I think I’m doing what all women in this position do. Half the time I want him killed, half the time I just want him back.”
    “Bryce must be a real loser,” Andy said. “I’m pretty miserable, but I don’t want him back. I just want the kitchen finished and some energetic young stud to come over a least a couple of times a week, then leave quietly.”
    “You’re disgusting.”
    Andy laughed at her. “Really? You’re just bitter. Not that I blame you, but I hope you can work this out. I love Phil. I know he has to be punished, but I love him. If I didn’t love you more, I’d take him off your hands.”
    They approached the door. “He watches himself brush his big, beautiful teeth, splatters all over the mirror and everywhere. He snores like a locomotive and farts in his sleep. He blows his nose in the shower and poops three times a day.”
    “Oh, he’s regular, that’s good. That’s one of the things I’ll be looking for in a man,” Andy said with a laugh. Then she knocked on Sonja’s door.
    “Knowing what you know, you could not have a man like Phil.”
    “Sister, if I could get a man down to one infidelity per twenty-five-year marriage, I’d think I was queen of the universe.” Andy knocked again.
    “I’m not ready to laugh about this yet,” Gerri informed her. “Where the hell is she? She’s usually pacing outside my door at least five minutes early. Hit the bell.”
    “I don’t want to wake George. He doesn’t get up before six.”
    “I wonder how he gets away with that, being married to the hyper one. Ring it, anyway.” When there was still no answer, Gerri pounded on the door. “What the heck,” she muttered. “Andy, see if you can see in the garage windows, see if there’s a car in there.”
    Andy handed off her coffee cup and jogged to the front of the garage. She had to jump up and down to get her eyes up to the windows in the garage door. Then she stopped and turned toward Gerri. “Just her car,” she said. “You think they went out for a whole night somewhere?”
    “She would’ve scheduled that with us three weeks in advance,” Gerri said. Then she pounded again and yelled, “Hey, Sonja! Sonja, come on!”
    “They’re not home,” Andy said.
    “She would’ve called. You know her—she’d pull herself off the operating table and call to say she’s running a little late because of major surgery.” She pounded and yelled again.
    “You’d better get in there,” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find BJ standing on the front walk. BJ shrugged. “She’s never missed a morning. She’d never be a no-show. She’s relentless.”
    Andy and Gerri exchanged looks, knowing how true that statement was, wondering for only a split second how BJ, who didn’t know them at all, would read the situation so accurately. So quickly.
    “Don’t you women have keys to each other’s houses? Because