Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder Read Free Page B

in the mood to share. She hadn’t yet wrapped her own mind around the news. Every time she looked at Brianna
     and Brian, her throat closed up. She found herself cataloging the tangle of their lashes, the way Brian’s nose tilted up at
     the tip, Brianna’s shoulders dusted with freckles.
    If she spoke the words out loud, then it would be real.
    “Marco didn’t believe me,” she said, casting about for any reasonable excuse for her behavior. “About the accident.”
    Judy wandered to the far cabinet where, by stretching her solid frame up on her toes, she could just reach the bottle of whiskey
     on the third shelf. “Beck,” she said, “you aren’t the best of drivers.”
    “So I’m repeatedly told.”
    “I mean,” Judy continued, “it’s not like this was your first fender bender.”
    “It was a deer.” At least, she thought it was a deer. It might have been a big beige dog. Or an odd-colored garbage can. It
     had all just happened so fast, and the sun was right in her eyes. “I clipped it on that road just by the nature preserve.”
     Twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit and she was riding just under it. “The place is lousy with deer.”
    Monique shifted her stance, a line appearing between her eyes. “How bad is the damage?”
    The damage to the car, at least, was repairable. She shrugged. “It’s more than we can afford right now. Marco is understandably
     angry.”
    Judy nudged her and held out a whiskey on ice. “Listen, when Bob had his so-called retirement and was home for four months,
     he took every frustration out on me. Thank God he was hired by this start-up online news corporation or we’d have killed each
     other by now.” Shrugging, she pushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear. “Marco is tense, Becky. He’s feeling like he can’t
     provide.”
     Becky let the pan drop right back into the water as she took the drink. “Marco made me go to the eye doctor to get my vision
     checked.”
    “That’s like when I sent Jake to get his hearing checked.” Judy rolled her whiskey glass in little circles on the kitchen
     table. “Perfect hearing, the doctor told me. Apparently my kid just doesn’t listen to me.”
    “Becky, you’re coming up on forty, yes?” Monique said. “Well, it’s a sad, dreary little fact that you’ll be wearing rhinestone-studded
     reading glasses before long.”
    Judy took a sip of her whiskey. “Hey, it’ll raise the chance that one of us will remember our glasses when we go out to eat. We’ll be like those three witches in that Disney movie, sharing one
     eye.”
    Becky clattered her glass onto the table. Her hand was shaking, and she’d already spilled some of the liquid onto her fingers.
     She tried to rub it off, but only succeeded in spreading it over her other hand. Maybe Monique would understand all this,
     she thought, digging her nails into her palms. At the very least Monique could explain it to her in a way she might be able
     to comprehend.
    Becky strode to the small desk in the corner of the kitchen and riffled through the permission slips and flyers she’d pulled
     from her kids’ backpacks until she found the information sheet she couldn’t bring herself to read. She glanced at it briefly
     and then, closing her eyes, thrust it behind her, toward Judy, who was closest.
    Judy took it and held it at arm’s length. “Wouldn’t you know I didn’t bring my reading glasses?” She squinted as she moved
     her head back a little. “And it’s in Latin, no less.”
    Monique started. She came around the table to peer over Judy’s shoulder. Becky watched Monique’s face as she swiftly read
     the text, her eyes moving back and forth. As Becky watched Monique read to the bottom, she noticed that her friend’s lips
     went tight, revealing a pale line around the edges.
     “I don’t get it,” Judy murmured, squinting ferociously. “All I can see is the title. What the hell is retinitis pigmentosa?”
    “It’s a disease.” Monique