Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online

belly pushed at the low waistband of the white bikini bottom, her breasts pressed at the cups of the top. No Special K and skim milk breakfasts for this one; no five A.M. sessions with a Pilates Nazi who’d bark, “USE your CORE,” as if Sylvie were a dog failing obedience class.
    So Ceil and Diana were right. This was real. She must have made some noise, some cry of dismay. Clarissa, who’d appeared at her elbow, looked at her sadly, but said nothing. Then again, really, what could Clarissa say? Sylvie was certain that the topic of how to handle it if your boss’s spouse was caught in a sex scandal had not been covered at Vanderbilt, where Clarissa had gotten her degrees.
    She tried to speak. “I think,” she began. But whatever she’d thought was interrupted by a man who’d come to stand next to her. He was a beefy fellow in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Red suspenders kept the jeans aloft. He had a grease-spotted Burger King bag in his hand.
    “Boy oh boy,” he said, as if Sylvie had started a conversation; as if, in fact, she’d been waiting all day to talk with him. “Here we go again with this. Pigs. All of them. Pigs.”
    “Pigs,” Sylvie repeated.
    “Okay,” said a young woman in jeans and dark-framed glasses, “okay, fine, but why are they wasting their time reporting on this? There’s a war going on. People are dying.” She gestured at the screen, where the words SEX SCANDAL crawled underneath the knot of Richard’s tie. “And this is what the news shows are doing? Following politicians around to find out where they’re getting their rocks off? Like, who even cares?”
    “Who,” said Sylvie, like an owl.
    “She’s not even that hot,” offered a fellow in a Giants jersey. Sylvie was unsurprised to see that he had a weak chin and teeth that pointed in several directions. Everyone’s a critic , Ceil always said. “Shit,” said the Giants fan. “If I was a senator, I’d get, like, Miss Universe to sleep with me.”
    “Nice,” said the girl in the glasses … but she said it quietly, so that the Giants-jersey guy could pretend he hadn’t heard.
    “I think it’s a disgrace,” said the man with the Burger King bag. “He’s probably got daughters her age.”
    “Daughters,” Sylvie repeated. She was aware, behind her, of the desperate glance Clarissa was undoubtedly shooting at Derek, a glance that telegraphed that this was developing into a Situation, that Steps Must Be Taken before Sylvie did something or said something to worsen this crisis before it could be massaged and managed and spun. Clarissa had gotten as far as placing a tentative hand on Sylvie’s shoulder and uttering the word “Ma’am?” when Sylvie’s bag (Prada, but discreet, with just one small label sewn underneath the handle) slipped out of her grasp and thumped to the floor. The fellow with the Burger King lunch knelt to retrieve it. “Ma’am? You all right?”
    Sylvie looked down at herself: her sheer hose and plain pumps, her expensive navy-blue knit skirt and jacket, a little too tight at the bust. (“Crunches!” she could hear her trainer exhorting. “Presses! Flies!” And his favorite, “Push-aways!” which meant pushing yourself away from the table.) My husband is fucking a legislative aide . There was a small reddish stain on the toe of the man’s work boot. She could feel her throat clenching tight, and the pressure of tears building. She could smell onions, the onions Richard denied himself in his morning omelet. It was a poor place for a life to end. But that was what was happening. Her life, the one she’d built over decades, the one she’d made alongside Richard, her life as his wife, her life as she’d known it, was ending, unraveling, coming apart right here in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
    Sylvie pressed her fist against her lips. Clarissa’s face, pale and worried, swam into her sight as she interposed her body between Sylvie and the man. “Mrs. Woodruff?” She shot a