The Law of Bound Hearts by Anne Leclaire Read Free Book Online

emphasized. She was being childish. Lee didn’t have a problem with her choice of food or the politics of her choice.
    â€œHow about splitting a Caesar?” he asked her. “That okay with you?”
    â€œFine.” Her voice was careful. She missed the easy way they usually had with each other, realized suddenly that they had never fought, not in all the months since that first dinner at Alice’s. Someone had carved a diamond into the maple tabletop and she traced the design with her forefinger, wondering not for the first time what urge led people to mar a perfectly fine surface, what desire to deface.
    Andrea brought their beers and the salad.
    â€œYou still going up to Scituate tomorrow?” Sam asked. There was a customer there who wanted to talk to Lee about constructing a yacht, a thirty-six-foot ketch based on a Herreshoff design. A dream commission.
    â€œWe had to reschedule. For next week.”
    â€œDisappointed?” She nudged a crouton to the side of the salad dish. He reached over and speared it.
    He shook his head. “If it’s meant to happen, it will happen without me pushing the river.” He said things like that,
pushing the river,
old hippie sayings that would have driven her mad if anyone else said them.
    Andrea brought their pizza. Sam ordered another beer. She was already over her limit, heading from lightly buzzed to the next stage, not exactly drunk but warming up. She would probably have a headache in the morning. She couldn’t drink as much as she used to. God, in her twenties she could polish off an entire six-pack and walk, draw, or sing a straight line, no problem.
    â€œHey,” he said. He reached over and entwined his fingers with hers.
    â€œHey, yourself,” she said, and suddenly things were all right again.
    She told him about the coming weekend, the three weddings, just the thought of which was now making her slightly panicked. He offered his help—purely moral support, she knew, for the delivery and last-minute on-site assembling and decorating weren’t something that could be delegated. Still, she was warmed by his offer. For the first time since they left the boatyard, Sam felt as if she could fully breathe.
    â€œSo what did she want?” he said after a while.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYour sister.”
    She disentangled her fingers, withdrew her hand. “I don’t know.”
    He waited.
    â€œShe left a message. She asked me to call her.”
    â€œAnd you haven’t.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAre you going to?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    He reached across again, reclaimed her hand. “Sam,” he said. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
    Her throat ached. “I don’t think so.” She wished he were sitting next to her instead of opposite her, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up and move to his side.
    He shrugged, withdrew his hand, picked up another slice of pizza, ate it.
    Finally she said, “Her name is Libby.”
    He nodded, waiting.
    â€œIt’s been a while since we talked. We had a falling-out.”
    He waited a moment and when she didn’t go on, he said, “A falling-out?”
    â€œYes.” The words sounded so simple—a minor tiff, a quarrel over a borrowed sweater.
    â€œThat’s it?”
    She nodded.
    â€œDo you want to talk about it?”
    â€œNot really.”
    He studied her for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
    â€œAre you ready?” Libby’s arm is around Sam’s waist, holding her close. They
perch on the edge of the webbed lawn chaise. Thigh to thigh, skin to skin, their
legs are bound together by three of their mother’s silk scarves.

Libby
    I’m dying.
    Such an overdramatic statement was utterly unlike her. She abhorred histrionics. She looked around to see if anyone had heard, but no one was in sight, thank God. The prairie was