Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online

pledging to go over there and sell it, but he hasn’t found the time. And with the economic climate over there the way it is …”
    “Maybe he likes to keep it.”
    “No, I think he likes to sell it. You should hear him complain about the taxes and the upkeep.” Lena touched her saucer and considered for a moment. “But I don’t think he wants to have to confront all their old stuff and not know what to do with it. He hates not knowing what to do.”
    “That will fall to you, then.”
    Lena nodded. “Maybe so.”
    One of the good things about Eudoxia was that her life overlappedwith Lena’s in no way other than these lessons. She was like a therapist or a bartender. Lena got to represent her world exactly the way she chose without needing to balance it for fairness or fearing that her words would make their way around in some distorted or uncomfortable way.
    Eudoxia sipped her coffee. Her face was thoughtful.
    “Has something happened to Tibby?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You haven’t seen her. You barely talk to her. You say it wasn’t always like this. Why do you think she has planned this?”
    Lena prodded her backpack under the table with the toe of her boot. “I think she just misses us and wants to be together.”
    “You think that’s all it is?”
    “What else could it be?”
    “I don’t know her. I couldn’t guess,” Eudoxia said honestly. She called the waitress over and ordered a cheese Danish with her customary look of relief and surrender. When it arrived she cut it into careful shapes with her knife. “Maybe you will see your young man there,” she said with a note of mischief.
    Eudoxia always referred to Kostos as “your young man.” Drew she referred to as “the sandwich maker.”
    Lena was tempted to act like she didn’t know what Eudoxia was talking about, but she didn’t bother. “Probably not. Imagine how busy he is. He works in London now.”
    “He goes back and forth. That’s what he said in his letter.”
    Lena pressed her fingers to her warm face. It was her own fault. She’d spent a lot of hours stumbling around in Greek trying to describe that letter. In fact, her fervency had ushered in a series of conversational breakthroughs, and Eudoxia had noticed it. She started calling Lena “my Daphne,” and when Lena asked why, she said, “Don’t you read your myths?” After that she always liked getting Lena to talk about Kostos.
    As for the subject of Drew, it did not yield any breakthroughs.
    “You should write to him and tell him you are coming,” Eudoxia declared. “You could write it in Greek! I could help you! Wouldn’t that be a surprise?” She whacked her hand on the table again.
    Lena hesitated. She could imagine how many people from Kostos’sold life were clamoring for his attention. She didn’t want to do that to him.
    In the silence Eudoxia seemed to recognize this was not something she could reasonably hope for. “But promise me this, my Daphne,” she said, leaning forward. “Promise me that at least you will call him. You will call him before you leave that island.”
    Lena just laughed. Not bloody likely . “Maybe,” she said aloud in Greek. “You never know what will happen.”

When you jump for joy,
            beware that no one moves the ground
                         from beneath your feet.
             —Stanislaw J. Lec

 
    Carmen was a terrible one for bargaining with God. She knew it was wrong, but she found herself doing it anyway. When she was nine, the night before she was flying to Orlando for a holiday weekend in Disney World with Lena’s family, she flopped around in her bed for hours, so excited she couldn’t stand it. As the hours passed, excitement grew so big it transformed into terror that she would die before morning. Her desire turned monstrous, and she was suddenly sure it would swallow the happiest day of her life. She begged God to please just keep her alive