The Sisterhood by Helen Bryan Read Free Book Online Page A

and Latin, which Menina had once been uncool enough to admit she loved, had remained anentrance requirement. Thanks to wealthy alumnae, the college had added an outstanding art history department.
    Being ladylike had its rewards. In her first year at college Menina had caught the eye of handsome Theo Bonner III. When Theo’s sports car began to appear in the Walkers’ driveway in the evenings, the whole town took note of the fact. Theo was the only son of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Georgia. He could have been a trust fund layabout, but instead was finishing law school at the university, planning to work for a law center for the indigent instead of joining one of the prestigious Atlanta law firms, and was generally approved of as a “boy with his feet on the ground who’d amount to something.” There was speculation he would go into politics, because the Bonners had been involved in state politics behind the scenes for generations.
    And in a scandalous age when single women and men lived together to see if the relationship worked before getting married, Theo had done the old-fashioned thing and proposed within a year of meeting Menina.
    In coffee mornings, at Bible class, garden-club luncheons, and church suppers the Walkers’ friends congratulated and envied Sarah-Lynn who never tired of regaling them with the story of how Menina and Theo first set eyes on each other.
    At college Menina had continued to work twice a week at the Hispanic community center, and a few weeks into her first year at Holly Hill she was rushing to one of her tutoring sessions with no time to change from paint-spattered jeans and an old sweatshirt full of holes she had worn for studio work. To her mortification, the center’s director called her into the office and introduced her as their hardest-working volunteer to Pauline and Theodore Bonner, who had come to see the center in operation. Feeling awkward, Menina shook hands with a distinguished gray-haired man, a slim and well-dressed older woman, and then their son, Theo Bonner III, whoshook Menina’s hand and said he was in law school and had come along to see if the center’s users could be referred to their free legal-advice sessions.
    Theo was taller than Menina, handsome in an agreeably scruffy way, tanned with sun-bleached hair that looked like it needed cutting, and wearing a frayed sport coat that must have been inherited from a fraternity-house grab bag. The director asked Menina to give the Bonners a tour and Menina did, flustered by Theo’s presence, unable to stop herself sneaking glances at him. Something about Theo made her feel like she had an electric current running through her bones. She tried to behave normally until Theo caught her looking at him, grinned back, and winked at her. When the Bonners left, Menina cursed the fact she looked like she had crawled out of a garbage can. Then she sighed and told herself not to be an idiot. Theo Bonner was way out of her league.
    She was dumbfounded when he called a week later, saying he’d wormed her number out of the director, and asked Menina out. At Christmas the following year, Theo had proposed. Menina, dazzled and in love for the first time in her life, felt sure it was all a dream—of course she said yes.
    Out of Sarah-Lynn’s hearing the ladies speculated that Menina was engaged because she had heeded her mother’s advice not to have sex before marriage, which would have been along the lines of advice given by their own mothers: “Men think, why buy the cow when I can get the milk for free?” Pretty, ladylike and deserving—Menina moved in an aura of romance and approval.
    The only person less than thrilled that Menina was getting married was Menina’s best friend, Becky Taliaferro, though she hadn’t had any time alone with Menina to say so since Menina called her with the news she was engaged. Becky thought Theo was nice and definitely attractive and Menina seemed to be in love, but she’d