Free Between Friends by Kristy Kiernan Page B

of those little planes.”
    “I’d be ever so careful. Come on, please? It’s perfect flying weather.”
    “How do you know you can even get a plane?”
    “I’ll call Keith. Season’s over, he’ll have one open.”
    “Maybe.”
    “What about Letty? Think she’d like to go up?”
    “Oh, I’m sure she’d love to. You kidding?”
    “Well, why don’t you see if she’d like to go, and I’ll pick her up at the store tomorrow afternoon. You can meet us at the field after you close.”
    “She’s staying with Emily tonight,” she said. “They usually go to the beach on Saturday.”
    “We should go down in our bikinis and mortify them.”
    “Please. The only place I wear a bikini these days is at my own pool. At night. When there’s no moon.”
    “Remind me to call the pool company to come out next week so we can swim while I’m here. It doesn’t look like it’s been done this month, and I don’t feel like cleaning it. I never get the chemicals right anyway.”
    Her hands paused in my hair for a moment. “You’ll be here for that long?”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “I’ll call for you tomorrow. Okay,” she said, snapping a band in place at the end of my braid. “My turn. You get started with a glass of wine, and I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
    I smoothed my hands against the sides and top of my head, feeling the satisfying bumpy line of the braid. “You’ve still got it,” I said.
    “You too, hot mama,” she said, and we smiled at each other in the mirror, both painfully aware that she was lying.

5

ALI

    I didn’t bother using any of the beauty products I’d given to Cora on myself. Not that I didn’t need them, but I wanted to get some wine in her and loosen her tongue as quickly as possible. There was obviously something major going on.
    The last time she’d been here for more than two weeks was when Barbara died. I’d stayed with her most of that time, going home only to pick up more clothes. She’d tried to get me to fly with her then, too, and I’d finally gone just to make her happy, but I was nauseated and kept my eyes closed the whole time.
    I trusted her skill. Cora had always done exactly what she set out to do, and then she did it better than anyone else. She was an excellent pilot, I was certain. But I’d have been terrified with Lindbergh himself. I did not trust it, I did not want to, and I did not have to.
    Letty would love it. I paused for a moment with my fingers tight against my scalp, suds dripping down my face, and then began to massage again, slowly. Yes, it was true. Letty was a lot like Cora. Okay, there it was.
    And Cora was right. We’d been little hellions, and we’d partied, and we’d taken outrageous risks, and we were very lucky nothing awful happened to us as teenagers, but we’d been pretty good kids, too. I still looked back and wondered that my parents had been so permissive, but we’d come through it all right.
    So Letty, really, was a combination of all of us. Me, Cora, and Benny, and that wasn’t a bad pedigree if you asked me. And maybe there would be another one. I felt a warmth deep in my belly, already anxious to talk to Cora about it. But her first. There was obviously something wrong, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.
    This was the first time that we hadn’t fallen into full-disclosure mode as soon as we’d seen each other, but of course she was the one who’d started things off so oddly. I rinsed off and wrapped myself in a towel, braiding my own hair over my shoulder.
    As promised, Cora was waiting for me on the patio with a glass of wine and some of the cheese and fruit I’d brought, blueberries gathered in her hand. I collapsed into the chair across from her.
    “You know, getting those shutters done was a lot easier when we were sixteen,” I said.
    “Wasn’t everything?”
    “I suppose,” I agreed, taking a sip of wine. “So. Are you going to tell me about it?”
    “What?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at