The Sisterhood by Helen Bryan Read Free Book Online Page B

never dated anybody else, so what did she know about men?Besides, Becky and Menina had always planned to travel and discover the world after college. Becky frankly hoped Menina wasn’t going to wind up as a housewife, even a rich one—Menina was too smart for that. Not just because she got As, but smart as in she liked ideas. She thought about stuff, really thought. Menina was the only person Becky knew who had a sort of scholarly streak—it was just who she was.
    But loyally, she was going to be Menina’s maid of honor in June. Now three months before the wedding, she had come home from college specially to choose her maid of honor dress. The two girls slouched on loungers in the Walkers’ sunporch, with iced tea and a plate of cookies between them. It was a comfortably shabby room—a repository for old rattan furniture, sun-faded cushions, and back issues of
Good Housekeeping
—and had been Menina and Becky’s playroom ever since the day Becky’s family moved next door to the Walkers. Seven-year-old tearaway Becky had grown tired of teasing the cat, ripping open packing boxes and driving her mother crazy, and climbed the fence to make friends with seven-year-old Menina. Before long, naughty, irrepressible, blonde Becky and shy, dark-haired, well-behaved Menina were inseparable, always together at one house or the other. The Taliaferros stopped referring to Menina as “that nice little Walker girl” and nicknamed her “the Child of Light” because around Menina, evil little Becky behaved beautifully.
    As children the girls had built tents with card tables and blankets in the sunporch, had rainy-day picnics; as preteens they huddled over a forbidden Ouija board; in high school they pushed the card tables back and practised for cheerleader tryouts. In their senior year they sat at the card tables filling out college applications together. At the time, Becky teased that Holly Hill was a dull choice, while Menina quipped that Becky’s eagerness to embrace a hectic social schedule and join a sorority with hundreds of other students at the University of Georgia filled Menina with dread.
    Neither imagined how quickly their choices would lead them in different directions. If Menina was on the road to matrimony in short order, Becky had seized the opportunity to spread her wings. Abandoning her preschool teaching course, she had surprised everyone who knew her by being accepted to the Grady School of Journalism where, between boyfriends, she had become surprisingly focused on a career as a foreign correspondent, like Marie Colvin or Christiane Amanpour. So people would take her seriously, Becky compensated for her pretty face, wide blue eyes, and blonde curls with a gold stud in her nostril, a tattoo on her shoulder, and her current boyfriend’s motorcycle jacket. All of it, from journalism to the jacket, gave her mother fits.
    Together again in their childhood haunt, for a minute it seemed impossible to be discussing such grown-up concerns like weddings and careers. How, both wondered, had they got to this stage of their lives already? Then Menina said, “You haven’t seen this yet. Look! Isn’t it beautiful?” and banished their childhood ghosts. She had twisted her engagement ring—a big diamond flanked by sapphires—inward, saving up for the big moment. Now she twisted it back and fluttered the fingers of her left hand at Becky. The setting sun shone through the dogwood trees into the sunporch, sending little sparkles from the diamond dancing on the wall.
    “Oh Child of
Light
!” exclaimed Becky, leaning over from her lounger. “It’s amazing! Did Theo choose it or did Mother Bonner point him in the right direction?”
    “Theo chose it. He said sapphires matched my eyes! Isn’t that sweet? But ‘Mother Bonner’—
please
!” Menina laughed. “Just between us, Mother Machiavelli’s more like it! I had no idea until I got to know her better. Don’t you remember, she was in that
Vogue
feature last