Five Fortunes by Beth Gutcheon Read Free Book Online

the Five-Mile Mountain Hike.
    Carter arrived bleary-eyed and made for the coffee.
    “Did you sleep?” asked Annette, the woman from dinner with the oil wells.
    “Like a rock,” said Carter.
    After stretching, Carter and Annette struck out together and were joined by the one whose brother was running for Congress. Her name was Courtney, and she could be heard reporting that her mother had ordered her to stay out of the way since the day she’d fainted during a family photo op. “I get ter rible stage fright,” she cried, apparently rather proud. This was a frailty of long standing.
    She had thrown up in kindergarten at the Mothers’ Coffee while portraying a fringed gentian.
    Lagging behind them, Rae walked silently, close to Laurie. Laurie looked ineffably sad, as if everything in the world reminded her of things she couldn’t bear.
    “I don’t suppose it would help if I gave you a hug, would it?” Rae said.
    Laurie shook her head and marched on, but Rae soon saw that she
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    was crying. They were climbing toward a ridge through a grove of lemon trees but below them they could see for miles along the dry valley floor. The earth under their feet was baked hard, and hikers could be thrown off stride by pebbles and hard balls of clay earth that rolled beneath their feet like marbles.
    Rae handed Laurie a pack of tissues she carried in her waist pack.
    “I’m sorry. I guess I miss my mother.” Laurie blew her nose. She was trying to make a joke, but her voice was pinched and high, as if her normal range of emotions had been crushed and squeezed into this weak treble register.
    “I’ve got more tissues.”
    “Thanks, I think I’m okay.” She sniffled, trying to turn to something light. “What else do you have in there?”
    “Well, let’s see,” said Rae, and began to root around. “A needle and thread, cough drops…some Bufferin…here’s a bar of soap from the Santa Barbara Biltmore. A little Stolichnaya in case of snake-bite…” She held up a tiny airline bottle of vodka. Laurie smiled.
    “I should just stay in my room till I get over this,” Laurie said.
    “No, I don’t think so,” said Rae. “It’s always better to see the sky.”
    They climbed on toward the ridge for a minute or two.
    “I lost my husband,” Laurie said.
    “I know how you feel.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes. I lost mine too, when I was about your age.”
    Laurie looked at her quickly.
    “It was a long time ago, but you never forget,” said Rae.
    “No. People say I will, that it will fade.”
    “Oh, bull,” said Rae.
    “How did you…was your husband sick?”
    “No, car crash. It was late at night, and the roads were wet.
    Somehow the car flipped over. There were no seat belts then, of course…. It was hot. The windows were open. His head was cut off.”
    Laurie winced. After a while she said, “Roberto was in a plane.
    The engine failed.”
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    “I had two small children,” said Rae.
    Laurie nodded. “I have children.”
    “Young ones?”
    Laurie nodded again.
    “How many?”
    “Five,” Laurie said in the high voice that wasn’t hers.
    “Good heavens! No wonder you’re worn out!”
    “It’s not—I have a lot of help.”
    “I’m glad to hear it, but still…”
    “I’m very lucky,” Laurie said. “My father, and my brother and sister-in-law—we all live close together.”
    “And cousins?”
    Laurie nodded.
    “That was always a dream of mine, a big family of kids all tumbling up together. How many cousins? How old?”
    They were on the ridge. They stopped to appreciate the scene spread below them. Then Laurie turned toward the path where Carter and her companions were climbing, and slowly started to walk again. Rae moved along with her.
    “Mine are…seventeen, that’s Carlos, then Anna, she’s fifteen, then Cara, she’s thirteen, and the twins are ten. They have four cousins, three girls and a boy.”
    “And you’re in the same building, or…? On the