The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online

there. Boxes and boxes of old things. My kids left all their stuff in this house.”
    Bridget shrank back. She hadn’t imagined that would come up quite so fast, even indirectly. In fact, as she sat there, she’d sort of forgotten the connection she had to this woman.
    “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
    Greta nodded. She squinted at Bridget’s face for a long moment. “You’re not from around here?”
    Bridget tapped her toes inside her sneakers. “No. I’m just here for, uh, summer vacation.”
    “Are you in high school?”
    “Yes.”
    “And your family?”
    “They are . . .” These were answers Bridget should have prepared ahead of time. “Traveling. I wanted to work to earn some extra money. For college next year.”
    She stood up and stretched her legs a little, hoping to ward off follow-up questions. She looked through the hallway to the back porch, her memory stirring at the big pink dogwood in the backyard with good low branches for climbing.
    She turned to look at the mantel. A framed photograph of six-year-old versions of her and her twin brother, Perry, looked back at her. Her breath caught. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. She sat back down.
    Greta pulled her eyes off Bridget and consulted her knotty knuckles for a while. “Fine. I’ll pay you five dollars an hour. How would that be?”
    Bridget tried not to grimace. Maybe that was the pay scale in Burgess, Alabama, but in Washington you wouldn’t flip a burger for that. “Uh, okay.”
    “When can you start?”
    “Day after tomorrow?”
    “Good.”
    She got up, and Bridget followed her to the front door. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Randolph.”
    “Call me Greta.”
    “Okay, Greta.”
    “I’ll see you day after tomorrow at . . . how’s eight?”
    “That’s . . . fine. See you then.” Bridget groaned inwardly. She had gotten very bad at waking up in the morning.
    “What did you say your last name was?”
    “Oh. It’s . . . Tomko.” There was a stray name that could use a new owner, even temporarily. Besides, she liked thinking of Tibby.
    “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
    “Just about to turn seventeen,” Bridget said.
    Greta nodded. “I have a granddaughter your age. She’ll be seventeen in September.”
    Bridget flinched. “Really?” Her voice warbled.
    “She lives up in Washington, D.C. You ever been there?”
    Bridget shook her head. It was easy to lie to strangers. It was harder when they knew your birthday.
    “Where are you from, anyway?”
    “Norfolk.” Bridget had no idea why she said that.
    “You’ve come a long way.”
    Bridget nodded.
    “Well, nice to meet you, Gilda,” the woman who was her grandmother called after her.
     
    “The restaurant was really fabulous. I thought we’d just go to a neighborhood place, but he’d made a reservation at Josephine. Can you believe that? I was worried I was underdressed, but he said I looked perfect. Those were his exact words. ‘You look perfect.’ Can you believe that? I spent the longest time trying to figure out what to order so I wouldn’t end up with béarnaise sauce down the front of my blouse or salad in my teeth.”
    Christina laughed so heartily it was as though no one had ever soldiered through that predicament before her.
    Carmen looked down at her whole-wheat toaster waffle. The four middle squares contained full pools of syrup and the rest of it lay dry. The things her mother was saying were things Carmen should have been saying. She couldn’t help noting the irony with a certain amount of sourness. Carmen wasn’t saying them because her mother was saying them and saying them and saying them and not shutting up.
    Christina widened her eyes dramatically. “Carmen, I wish you could have tasted the dessert. It was to
die
for. It was called
tarte tatin
.”
    The overeager French accent with the uptilting snap of Puerto Rican just under the surface made Carmen unable to be as mad at her mother as she wanted to