Forever Friends by Lynne Hinton Read Free Book Online Page A

talk about it to me?”
    Louise said nothing as she thought about all the secrets a person holds, all the things somebody says and does not say, the clues in a marriage or in a friendship that point to topics open for discussion and those that are sealed.
    She thought about Roxie and wondered if she had ever talked to her husband about her suspicions of her best friend, about the night Louise had gotten drunk and kissed her, then run out of the boardinghouse, staying away for a week, how they had never spoken of the event.
    She thought about her own secrets, her own hidden memories. She thought about her mother and the odd way she acted around certain men in the family, guarded and keen-eyed, the relatives Louise was not permitted to visit.
    She recalled the stories she had heard from the other women in the mill, stories marked with large chunks of time that were not discussed or reportedly not remembered, stories of lives that appeared to have started at the age of eighteen, lives without childhoods or parents or memories. Lives with so many things not said that it was easier to pretend they never happened than it was to uncover them.
    â€œEverybody’s got secrets, Bea,” she said softly.
    â€œI don’t have secrets,” she replied. “I’ve never had secrets!” She walked away from the desk and sat down in the chair in the corner near the sewing area.
    â€œThen consider yourself fortunate,” Louise responded. “They usually aren’t something you’re glad to have.”
    Beatrice faced Louise. “What’s your secret?” she asked.
    Louise’s appearance changed. She hesitated a moment, seeming to think about the question, then shifted to face her friend.
    â€œWhich secret you want to know about, Bea?” She was forthright, steady.
    Beatrice went red and turned away, shaking her head.
    â€œYeah, I thought not,” Louise said.
    There was a heavy silence as the weight of what was asked and then taken back settled upon the two women.
    â€œAll my life, I’ve never had a secret.” Beatrice rested against the chair. “My family would tell each other things at the dinner table before I got there, and then Daddy would make them hush before I ever heard the joke or the story.” She dropped her hands in her lap.
    â€œMy sisters and their friends, they used to giggle and talk real low to each other, and I’d try to be a part of the group, try to find out the things they said. The things that made them blush and laugh and seem to come alive, the whispers behind a shield of hands, the silly notes they guarded like they were money or read privately and then tore up into tiny little pieces and scattered them in the fireplace.”
    She looked away. “Everybody always said I was too young or that I would tell.” She stopped briefly, then added thoughtfully, “That I talked too much.”
    Louise almost laughed out loud to think of Beatrice as a little girl. It was funny to imagine the kind of child she must have been.
    â€œAnd then I had my own friends, and I’d find out all these things that everybody else knew days or months earlier and that nobody had told me.”
    Beatrice’s bottom lip began to tremble, and Louise suddenly realized the magnitude of what the other woman was telling her.
    â€œI was always the last to know everything, always, always last.” Beatrice began to cry. “And then there was Robin and Jenny, like two thieves they were so tight. And I wanted to be more than a mother to them. I wanted to be their friend. But as soon as I would walk into the room where they were or get in the car or sit beside them at the table, they’d just clam up, just quit talking, like I was the enemy or something.”
    She drew in quick breaths. The tears stood in her eyes and then fell. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a tissue.
    â€œAnd now this.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Now I’m