Free Flirting With Pete: A Novel by Barbara Delinsky

broadest sense of the word.”
    “Well, I didn’t see it. The place is nearly as impersonal as your condo.”
    “Excuse me? My condo isn’t impersonal. My stuff is all over the place.”
    “Mess doesn’t mean personal. Mess simply means that you aren’t neat, and that isn’t what I’m talking about. Your walls are bare. Your bookshelves are filled with professional books. Your refrigerator contains absolutely nothing that would give a clue about you or your friends.”
    “My bulletin board is filled with personal pictures.”
    “Tacked on. Taped on. Balanced precariously on one another, like you don’t know if they’ll stay or not and you don’t really care. You’ve been talking about putting up drapes since you bought the place, but you haven’t shopped for them once.”
    “Drapes are expensive. I’m strapped just paying the mortgage. If I sell this place, I can pay the mortgage ten times over.”
    That awesome fact silenced them both. In the ensuing quiet, the city sounds emerged. Traffic thrummed over Beacon Hill from the highways, rocked by a siren, the honk of a horn. A chopper flew over the State House. A bus grunted and grumbled down Beacon Street.
    It was all there, but distant. Casey felt removed from the outside world. Here in the garden, the smells were of clean earth, budding flowers, and water trickling over timeworn stone. As for the siren, the honk, the grunt and the grumble, they were softened by the rustle of leaves when a gray squirrel ran up the nearby oak toward the bird feeder hanging there. Dashing out on a limb, it dropped headfirst down the cage surrounding the tube of seed. When it couldn’t squeeze through the bars, it tried to gnaw its way through one bar, then a second and a third. In time it gave up, leapt to the ground, and ran off.
    “Does it feel discouraged?” Casey mused. “Does it feel confused? Does it feel like a failure in its parents’ eyes? No. It just… goes… on. I think I’d like to be a squirrel.”
    “No, you wouldn’t. I saw one mashed on the street on my way here. That happened because it lacked the brains to look both ways.” Brianna slid her a wry grin. “Not that you always look both ways either.” The grin faded. “Will you mention this to Caroline?”
    Casey felt the gnawing inside that thought of her mother always caused. “I already have. She didn’t bat an eyelash.”
    “Oh, Casey.”
    “I’m serious. I thought it might get her going— you know, fire her up to look me in the eye and say something perfectly reasonable and totally guilt-inducing.” She met Brianna’s gaze. “Not a word.”
    Brianna didn’t say a word, either. She might have said, Of course not. She’s as close to being brain dead as a person can be without actually being brain dead . But Casey didn’t want to hear that. They had argued about it more than once. Casey clung to the belief that Caroline heard something, felt something, thought something. Medical science said that the likelihood of it was slim. Still, there were brain waves. They were weak. But they were there.
    “Would she be happy about this, Brianna?” Casey asked.
    “Yes. Caroline adores you. She wants the very best for you. She’d be thrilled that you’ve come into this.”
    Casey wanted to believe it, but she had her doubts. She felt like a traitor just sitting here in Connie’s garden.
    Feeling the weight of that thought, she slipped down to the bare earth. From all fours, she sat back on her heels, then gently lowered her upper body until it rested on her thighs. Her forehead touched the ground. Letting her arms trail beside her, palms up, she closed her eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.
    The earth smelled rich. It felt moist against her forehead. Taking one deep belly breath after another, she focused on clearing her mind. She focused on releasing the worry, focused on relaxing, focused on the positive force of the energy her body created.
    “Does that help?” Brianna asked from