Promises to Keep by Jane Green Read Free Book Online

hers, and three years on she loves it.
    As with so many book clubs, it is less about the book and almost entirely about camaraderie. It is about women remembering who they were before they had children. Women who can collapse into a sofa with a glass of wine and not have someone pulling at their T-shirt or running in demanding that Mommy punish a sibling for hitting them.
    It is about laughter. And friendship. And bonding. It has become a bright spot in all of their lives, and tonight, as with every other Book Club night, the women will dress up, put on makeup, sparkle just a little bit more. Not for their husbands, but for the other women.
    When it’s warm enough, Book Club has always been outside, or at least starts outside, with drinks in sun-filled gardens, around serene swimming pools, on fieldstone terraces overlooking hills, before moving inside or onto screened porches, while the drink continues to flow and the women get more comfortable.
    During the summer, the women all wear dresses. Brightly colored silk or chiffon sundresses with strappy sandals, their skin glowing as they sip their pomegranate martinis and throw their heads back with laughter, knowing how beautiful they all look.
    But now, in the autumn, Book Club means fires, glasses of red wine, cozy sweaters and curling up on squishy sofas. It is the time of year that Callie adores, and she is looking forward to everyone’s arriving.
    She flicks the light on in her dressing room and idly pulls out a couple of dresses. She isn’t really a dress girl, has never felt entirely herself in dresses, although for special occasions she’ll put one on. Tonight she decides she’ll wear jeans. She’s always more comfortable in jeans, and she’ll pair her favorite dark skinny ones with high boots and a pale pink chiffon blouse. A long delicate gold chain with a chunky crystal at the end, and she’ll be perfect.
    There is a uniform out here, and it is quite different from the uniform Callie wore when she lived in the city. In the suburbs, the women wear smarter clothes, more dresses, more color.
    In the city, Callie and all her friends wore jeans everywhere. Jeans with cute ankle boots and sweaters, or jeans with heels and gauzy tops in the evening. She’s still fighting the suburban pull, although she did confess to Lila that she has succumbed, and—shh, don’t tell anyone—actually has a couple of Lilly Pulitzer shifts at the very back of her wardrobe.
     
    The coffee table is strewn with various copies of Anita Shreve’s Testimony , half-empty glasses of wine, plates covered with crumbs. In the center of the table is an almost-finished pumpkin gingerbread trifle, with a dozen spoons sticking out.
    This has become their secret tradition. Every month a different member is assigned dessert. Everyone brings something—cookies, lemon bars, brownies—but they are always picked up at the grocery store, and only one has to cook a decadent dessert from scratch.
    And it must be huge.
    There are no plates for the dessert; only spoons are handed out. They all stand crowded around the dessert and on the count of three they plunge in, scooping dessert by the spoonful, figures, calories and men be damned.
    Tonight Betsy made the trifle, and nobody spoke for a few seconds, just moaned with joy as they gorged.
    “If no one pounces,” Callie says as she walks in from the kitchen, eyeing the trifle, “I’m going to finish that up.”
    “You can afford to,” says Laura. “You’re tiny. You could eat an entire trifle every day and it probably wouldn’t show.”
    “You know what’s really weird?” Callie scrapes the last of the trifle and licks the spoon. “I was way bigger before I had babies.”
    “That is weird,” Laura says. “And unfair.”
    “I know. I wasn’t huge, but always had, like, ten, fifteen pounds I needed to get rid of, and I always knew that once I had kids I’d get rid of it.”
    “Instantly?” one of the other women asks.
    “No. Until