Nine Perfect Strangers Read Free

evangelical about the food, the hot springs, the staff, or it was the worst experience of their entire lives, there was talk of legal action, post-traumatic stress, and dire warnings of “enter at your own peril.”
    Frances looked again at the dashboard, hoping to catch the clock tick over to three.
    Stop it. Focus. Eyes on the road, Frances. You’re the one in charge of this car.
    Something flickered in her peripheral vision and she flinched, ready for the massive thud of a kangaroo smashing her windshield.
    It was nothing. These imaginary wildlife collisions were all in her head. If it happened, it happened. There probably wouldn’t be time to react.
    She remembered a long-ago road trip with a boyfriend. They’d come across a dying emu that had been hit by a car in the middle of a highway. Frances had stayed in the passenger seat, a passive princess, while her boyfriend got out and killed the poor emu with a rock. One sharp blow to the head. When he returned to the driver’s seat he was sweaty and exhilarated, a city boy thrilled with his own humane pragmatism. Frances never quite forgave him for the sweaty exhilaration. He’d liked killing the emu.
    Frances wasn’t sure if she could kill a dying animal, even now when she was fifty-two years old, financially secure, and too old to be a princess.
    â€œYou could kill the emu,” she said out loud. “Certainly you could.”
    Goodness. She’d just remembered that the boyfriend was dead. Wait, was he? Yes, definitely dead. She’d heard it through the grapevine a few years back. Complications from pneumonia, supposedly. Gary always did suffer terribly from colds. Frances had never been especially sympathetic.
    At that very moment her nose dripped like a tap. Perfect timing. She held the steering wheel with one hand and wiped her nose with the back of her other hand. Disgusting. It was probably Gary vindictively making her nose drip from the afterlife. Fair enough too. They’d once been on road trips and professed their love and now she couldn’t even be bothered to remember he was dead.
    She apologized to Gary, although, really, if he was able to access her thoughts, then he should know that it wasn’t her fault; if he’d made it to this age he’d know how extraordinarily vague and forgetful one became. Not all the time. Just sometimes.
    Sometimes I’m as sharp as a tack, Gary .
    She sniffed again. It seemed like she’d had this truly horrendous head cold even longer than the back pain. Wasn’t she sniffling the dayshe delivered her manuscript? Three weeks ago. Her nineteenth novel. She was still waiting to hear what her publisher thought. Once upon a time, back in the late nineties, her “heyday,” her editor would have sent champagne and flowers within two days of delivery, together with a handwritten note. Another masterpiece!
    She understood she was no longer in her heyday, but she was still a solid, mid-level performer. An effusive email would be nice.
    Or just a friendly one.
    Even a brisk one-liner: Sorry, haven’t got to it yet but can’t wait! That would have been polite.
    A fear she refused to acknowledge tried to worm its way up from her subconscious. No. No. Absolutely not.
    She clutched the steering wheel and tried to calm her breathing. She’d been throwing back cold and flu tablets to try to clear her nose and the pseudoephedrine was making her heart race, as if something wonderful or terrible was about to happen. It reminded her of the feeling of walking down the aisle on both her wedding days.
    She was probably addicted to the cold and flu tablets. She was easily addicted. Men. Food. Wine. In fact, she felt like a glass of wine right now and the sun was still high in the sky. Lately, she’d been drinking, maybe not excessively, but certainly more enthusiastically than usual. She was on that slippery slope, hurtling toward drug and alcohol addiction! Exciting