The Life List by Lori Nelson Spielman Read Free Book Online

of smiling, he shot me a look of contempt. I knew then that Andrew found nothing admirable about his modest beginnings, and that growing up among the affluent had left a scar.
    At once, a wave of panic grips me.
    The rich-little-poor-kid has spent his entire adult life accumulating markers of success, hoping to compensate for his humble roots. And I wonder, now, if I’m just one of them.
    F rom the driveway, I stare up at Jay and Shelley’s picture-perfect Cape Cod. Manicured shrubs line the brick sidewalk, and orange and yellow mums spill from white concrete urns. An uncharacteristic wave of jealousy comes over me. The proverbial bed they’ve chosen to lie in is sumptuous and cozy, while mine is lumpy and teeming with bedbugs.
    Through the brick walkway, I gaze into their lush backyard and catch sight of my nephew running with a rubber ball. He looks up when my car door slams.
    “Auntie Bwett!” he calls to me.
    I rush to the backyard and scoop up Trevor, and we twirl untilI can’t see straight. For the first time in three days, I can feel a genuine smile light my face.
    “Who’s the boy who makes me happy?” I ask, tickling his belly.
    Before he can answer, Shelley steps from the brick patio, her hair heaped atop her head in an accidental ponytail. She’s wearing what I suspect are a pair of Jay’s jeans, rolled up at the ankles.
    “Hey, sis,” she calls. We were friends and college roommates before she married my brother, and we still get a silly kick out of calling each other sister.
    “Hey, you’re home today.”
    She traipses over to me in ragg wool slippers. “I quit my job.”
    I stare at her. “No you didn’t.”
    She bends down to pull a weed. “Jay and I decided it’d be best for the kids if one of us stayed home. With your mother’s inheritance we don’t need the extra money.”
    Trevor wriggles from my grip and I lower him to his feet. “But you love your job. What about Jay? Why doesn’t he quit?”
    She stands up, holding a dead dandelion in her hand. “I’m the mommy. Makes more sense.”
    “So you’re done. Just like that?”
    “Yup. Lucky for me, the woman who filled in during my maternity leave was still available.” She plucks dried fronds from the dandelion and tosses them at her feet. “They interviewed her yesterday and she started today. I didn’t even need to train her. It all worked out perfectly.”
    I hear the catch in her voice, and I know it’s not as perfect as she wants me to think it is. Shelley was a speech pathologist at Saint Francis Hospital. She worked in their rehab unit, teaching adults with traumatic brain injuries not only how to talk again, but how to reason and negotiate and socialize. She used to boast that it wasn’t a job, it was her calling.
    “I’m sorry, but I just can’t picture you as a stay-at-home mom.”
    “It’ll be great. Almost all the women in this neighborhood are stay-at-home moms. They gather every morning at the park, have playdates, take Mommy–toddler yoga classes. You wouldn’t believe all the social stuff my kids missed out on when they were in day care.” Her eyes find Trevor, running in circles with his arms outstretched like an airplane. “Maybe this speech pathologist can finally teach her own kid how to talk.” She chuckles, but it hits the wrong chord. “Trevor still can’t say his—” She stops midthought and looks at her watch. “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
    “Nope. Catherine fired me.”
    “Oh, my God! I’ll call the sitter.”
    L ucky for us, Megan Weatherby, the hypotenuse of our friendship triangle, has a hobby job as a realtor, with little ambition to actually sell houses. And lucky for Megan, she’s practically engaged to Jimmy Northrup, Chicago Bears defensive end, rendering real estate commission optional. So when Shelley and I call her on our way to The Bourgeois Pig Café, she’s already there, as if she’d anticipated this little crisis.
    We’ve declared The Bourgeois