With Friends Like These: A Novel by Sally Koslow Read Free Book Online

brought him to the sink. “I’m thinking fusilli with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.” He rinsed Henry’s sticky fingers as quickly as if they were ten baby carrots.
    “You cooked last night.”
    “That’s your problem,” Tom said with a grin. “You keep score. I swear you have a spreadsheet hidden somewhere.”
    I walked over to my lanky husband, pushed back his reddish hair, badly in need of one of his fifteen-dollar haircuts, and thought,
You I will always love, always trust, and always respect, and every one of those things is more important than money
. “Talked me into it,” I said. “I’ll do Henry’s bath,” I called out as I walked to our small bedroom in the back of the apartment.
    An extra half hour alone was like a slice of cheesecake with none of the calories. I could swallow it in one immense gobble by napping, or I could savor it in multitasking nibbles as I read a few pages in the book I’d started reading last month—no, last fall—and called my mother or watched TV. While I was savoring my options, the phone rang.
    “Hi there.” Chloe sounded even more chirpy than usual. “Jamyang said yes.”
    “Going to give her a day off for the Dalai Lama’s birthday?” Mean Maxine inquired. Xander had lobbied for a Chinese nanny so that Dash could learn Mandarin, but Chloe thought a Tibetan child care worker would bring serenity to Brooklyn Heights.
    “My only concern is she’s seriously gorgeous,” she said. “Jamyang is this exquisite creature with long, silky hair.” Not unlike Chloe, I thought, who’s gone through life being compared to a doll, while I—taller, with sharp angles everywhere—live in fear that someone might notice my uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. “She’s starting Monday, so I’ll be back at work next week.” Finally. For the last month, with Chloe between nannies, I’d been handling our job solo. Then again, Chloe had filled in for me when I visited my parents last winter. Such was our deal.
    Chloe and I had started to brainstorm for a sales pitch when Tomstepped into the bedroom, holding Henry’s hand. “Dinner in five,” he said. “Pasta awaits.”
    “Tom’s cooking again?” Chloe asked. “No takeout over there in the Slope?”
    As if the Fisher-Wells family would ever splurge on ordering in. “You know our dirty little secret. Tom loves to cook, and don’t get him going on stain removal or he’ll whip up a poultice so fast your marble won’t know what hit it.” Tom had acquired his domestic engineering technique courtesy of his parents’ housekeeper. “Got to go,” I said, “but I’ll think in my sleep and e-mail you in the morning.”
    After taking Pontoon for a walk, Tom topped off dinner with peach cobbler as we did a rundown of Henry’s latest, most winning accomplishments. That’s when Tom asked the question I was expecting. “Have you made up your mind?”
    “As a matter of fact, I have,” I answered calmly, although my insides were swing-dancing.
    He pushed up the bridge of his wire-rimmed glasses, an anxiety indicator as reliable as another man’s grinding teeth, and gave his fork the kind of attention due a fossil as I said, “Not even a choice, really.”
    For so many summers I’d stopped counting, Tom had worked at Camp Becket in the Berkshires, where I’d join him most weekends—for the last three with Henry in tow. The unspoiled lake and equally unspoiled boys who benefited from his patient attention as athletic director; the accommodations in the stone lodge bearing the name of the original Henry Thomas Wells, Tom’s grandfather—it was a needlepoint throwback to an era before stress became a verb. Everything said 1960, including Tom’s salary. His camp contract was on the desk, as was the contract for option B, a grown-up summer job: doing research at Xander’s firm. When Xander had offered the position, my first thought was that pity might be the catalyst. My second was that if this was what Tom