Getting Some Read Free

Ugh.” Annelise makes a face of pure disgust. “I hope he rots in jail for embezzling money from the Wishes Come True Foundation. Never in a million years would I think the man I married could be such a heartless son of a bitch. To steal money that goes toward helping terminally ill children…”
    “What’s happening with that?” I ask. I’ve only been away for two weeks, but it seems like much longer. A lifetime, in many ways.
    “I heard Charles was begging for a plea bargain. Claimed the embezzlement wasn’t his idea.”
    I snort at that.
    “Exactly. He can keep dreaming, because with the evidence they have against him, he’ll be lucky if the sentence is lenient.”
    “The evidence you found in Costa Rica,” I say proudly. It was Annelise’s bright idea to search her husband’s tropical condo when she learned it existed. Honestly, I never thought my sister had it in her to become a modern Agatha Christie. With Charles, she accepted substandard treatment. She became a wimp under him, if you ask me. Always wondering what she could do to please him, how she could spice up their love life to keep him happy when he suddenly didn’t want sex from her. It was no surprise to me that he’d been screwing someone else for quite some time.
    “And it was so much fun,” Annelise admits.
    “Wasn’t it, though? And when Charles showed up at the condo…”
    “I know! I thought it was over, right then and there.” Annelise pauses as she chuckles. “I can’t believe that was my life, not some HBO movie.”
    “Did you talk to a lawyer yet, see if you can get any money from the house?” I ask. “After how you helped break the case, the last thing you deserve is to get screwed over in this.”
    Annelise nods as we approach her Volvo. “I have. Claudia set me up with one of her uncles, and he’s really great. He seems optimistic, but I don’t want to hold my breath.”
    “Claudia’s the spoiled rich one, right?”
    Annelise frowns as she meets my gaze. “Spoiled?”
    “Yeah. She doesn’t work, her parents pay for everything.”
    “So?”
    “So I’d say that’s pretty spoiled.”
    “Well she’s not,” Annelise says in defense of her friend. “Claudia does a lot of charitable work, as many rich people do. That was what she was going to do when she married Adam—devote her life to charitable causes. But then he screwed her over and the wedding was off.”
    Annelise opens the trunk for me, and I hoist my suitcase into it. Suddenly I smile. The two of us here like this, doing things that sisters normally do on a day-to-day basis—it’s nice.
    Even having a bit of a disagreement, as sisters often do, is welcome. Because it means we’re communicating.
    I should point out that my sister and I haven’t been exactly close. She’s older than I am, and for most of our adult lives she’s looked down on the choices I’ve made. Like the decision to be an exotic dancer. But in the last couple months, our relationship has gone through a marked change. We’re talking. Communicating again without judging each other.
    In short, we’ve become friends.
    We probably have a long way to go, but I’m hopeful about the future. At least when it comes to my sister, that’s one relationship that’s working out.

Two
    Annelise
    T he moment my eyes open, I do what has become part of my morning routine over the past couple of weeks. I glance to my right, see my lover’s naked body and smile.
    My how times can change.
    If you’d told me six months ago that today I’d be getting sex regularly and that my best friends and sister would be the ones now going without, I would have laughed in your face. No, I would have cried. That’s how pathetically miserable my sex life was with my husband.
    I had a husband who, after we’d been together for ten years, stopped touching me. Completely. Didn’t want to make out, much less have sex. He started treating me like I was his grandmother in terms of the sexual contact between us,