Interior Designs Read Free

impertinence to authority had earned them an hour of after-school chores, and Cathryn and the auburn-haired, freckle-faced Judy had become fast friends as they refilled salt and pepper shakers in the lunch room. They remained friends, growing up in the same close-knit West Palm Beach neighborhood where they were encouraged by both sets of parents to think of each other's homes as their own.
    Cathryn had been awed by the comparative luxury of Judy's house. Judy's father was a well-to-do attorney while Cathryn's dad was a poorly paid clerk in an automotive store. The house where Cathryn's family lived was a run-down white stucco, small and cramped. Cathryn vowed in those early years that she would live like Judy and her family when she grew up.
    Susannah Fagan arrived on the scene later. She arrived in the middle of seventh grade and possessed an enviably curvy figure and long black hair. Susannah managed to wriggle her way into Cathryn and Judy's closed society by craftily offering lessons in how to flirt.
    Serious-minded Cathryn and bouncy, bubbly Judy had found Susannah's offer impossible to resist, especially when they saw the results of Susannah's flirting with the eighth-grade boys. Somehow they had become friends, the three of them, despite the total failure of Susannah's lessons. Cathryn and Judy hadn't learned to flirt until much later. Susannah sadly admitted after her second divorce that it was just as well that the two of them had been late bloomers. In the long run, all flirting had done for her, she admitted, was get her into trouble.
    Their three-way friendship had survived through high school and college, Judy's subsequent marriage and motherhood, Susannah's spate of marriages and divorces, and the demands of Cathryn's career. Ron, Judy's husband, was like a big brother to Cathryn, and their eight-year-old daughter, Amanda, was Cathryn's goddaughter. Susannah, a resident of New York City and an inveterate jet-setter, flew into town from time to time for whirlwind visits, the purpose of which was to bring the other two up-to-date on what was going on in her hectic personal life. Susannah, Judy, Ron, and Amanda were Cathryn's only true family other than a few distant cousins who lived so far away that their only connection was a yearly Christmas card.
    Two weeks after Cathryn had declined to go out with Drew Sedgwick, Susannah breezed into town. Of course, the three friends wanted to get together, and Judy offered her home as a gathering place.
    "Tonight's like old times again," Susannah declared happily in her breathy voice. "Just think, a slumber party! We haven't done this since high school." Susannah hugged a soft down pillow to her ample breasts.
    "Since the night before graduation," agreed Cathryn. The three of them were lounging in pleasant dishabille around Judy's big living room, Judy's husband having conveniently taken their daughter camping. Whenever the three of them got together, it was always instant intimacy, no matter how long they'd been apart.
    "Fifteen years," mused Judy, the most sentimental of the three. "Can you believe it's been fifteen years?"
    "With three ex-husbands, yes," Susannah said dryly, tossing her dark hair back over her shoulders. Susannah was currently between marriages.
    "What I want to know," said Cathryn, "is why we're having a class reunion after fifteen years. Shouldn't it be twenty?"
    "Because we never got around to having a tenth," Judy reminded her. "We were all too busy having babies and things like that."
    " You were busy having babies," pointed out Cathryn. " I was busy working."
    "I was getting divorced from husband number two," said Susannah reminiscently.
    "Good grief, Susannah. Are you assigning them numbers now?" asked Cathryn, looking askance at her friend. Of Susannah's three husbands, Cathryn could only remember the first, and that was because he'd been extremely handsome.
    Susannah made a face. "Recalling numbers is easier than trying to remember their names."