The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley Read Free Book Online

smoking on the patio, hiking up the hems of their uniform dresses to get a little sun. They’ll order pizza and leave it untouched on the table, crunch the ice in their diet sodas, and talk about boys, teachers, parties. Who’s getting high in the bathroom; who’s been pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road. A couple of girls will rush in from tennis practice, with their short skirts and pale thighs, and drag chairs over from another table. Then the boys from Saint Anthony’s will thunder in, freshly showered, their hair wet and their cheeks red, reeking of spicy cologne that always makes me sneeze. Then everyone will be sitting on everyone’s lap, or pressed standing in small groups in the corners. At six-thirty, Mr. Zorba will shoo everyone out to make room for the Real Paying Customers, and everyone will spill onto the sidewalk, laughing and making plans.

    My favorite time of day, usually.
    My mom’s car is in the driveway, her purse open on the passenger seat. The bill compartment is fat with bills. I have to be careful when I slide out a twenty, time it for when she’s super-busy and might not notice. Gabby, my dad’s always saying. You have to be more careful. It makes me crazy, too: I know lots of kids whose cars have been broken into. But my mom always thinks she’s the exception. My dad would reach in to grab her bag and stow it in the trunk. She’s your mother, he’d say to me, with a wink, and I’d toss back, You married her.
    I hear her now in the sunroom, heels clicking on the terrazzo tiles. She’s probably watering her orchids a drop at a time. She’ll be in there for ages, talking to one important client after another on her cell phone. Let me find you something more classic, she’ll say. Or, Not many people can wear orange. I set my book bag on the floor. If she asks why she hadn’t heard me come in, I’ll just tell her I’d called out. Sometimes that works.
    I tiptoe up the stairs in my bare feet, go into my mom’s dressing room, and haul her little stepstool over to the cubbies that line the wall, filled with shoes wrapped in tissue paper. Here’s where she hides crisp hundred-dollar bills sleeved in bank envelopes, her Ativan, and chewy chocolate laxatives. I feel around behind the black silk rhinestone stilettos. Nothing. I stand high on my tiptoes to make sure. I check the one to the right. I check them all, but the robin’s-egg-blue Tiffany box holding my beautiful gold bracelet isn’t there anymore.

Natalie
    THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR’S a winding tunnel of hard white surfaces reflecting noise and light. A headache starts, pushing its way between my eyes and settling in, a solid knot. My rain-damp clothes are dry, but my shoes squeak against the linoleum. After my first few circuits, the nurse at the nurses’ station no longer glances up with a smile. She’s checked and reassured me that Arden made it through surgery without complication, but she can’t explain why Arden still hasn’t been wheeled to her room, which is prepped and waiting—the equipment rolled in and positioned against the walls. The room is as dark as Rory’s, intentionally so. The girls need to stay calm while they recuperate. I will have to get my nerves in check before Arden arrives. I will need to force down my jitters because surely she will sense it, but all I can think of is I need a cigarette.
    I pat my pockets, reach into the bag hooked over my shoulder. Of course there’s nothing there. I hide my pack in my desk at Double where Theo would never find it. I’d quit when I was pregnant with Arden. He doesn’t know I’ve started up again.
    Theo’s in admissions, signing papers. Vince and Gabrielle are in with Rory, and I haven’t seen any other family members. Nurses have been going in and out of the sliding glass doors leading in to patients’ rooms. They talk quietly in the hall. One of them nibbles cheese crackers from a plastic bag as she stands beside a wheeled computer,