One True Love Read Free Page A

hopefully. “Can I play, too?”
    “She doesn’t want to play with you,” Dylan said.
    “Yes, she does.”
    “No, she doesn’t.”
    “Go away,” Maggie yelled. “I’m on the phone.”
    “Maggie?” Lisa’s voice came over the receiver like an answer to a prayer.
    “Lisa. Thank God, you’re there.” Maggie took a deep breath. Eight years ago what she needed to say would have come easily. Now there were barriers between them, years when they hadn’t seen much of each other, layers of grief and disillusionment that weighed heavily on their friendship, but Maggie had nowhere else to turn. “I need you.”
    She closed her eyes, waiting for Lisa’s response.
    Lisa stared blindly at her desktop, not seeing the work, spread out before her, hearing only the anguish in Maggie’s voice. I need you. Three short words that demanded so much, coming from a woman who had always asked for so little. They had been best friends forever. Maggie Maddux Scott with her golden hair, her big booming laugh and wide generous smile had befriended Lisa on her first day at a new middle school. She didn’t care that Lisa was different, that she was too shy, too skinny, too nervous, too everything. Maggie’s friendship had come like the sun after a long winter’s storm. She’d introduced Lisa to the joy of laughter, to the secrets of best friends. With two older brothers, Maggie was dying for a sister, and Lisa fit the bill. They’d been inseparable for years, until… Lisa’s gaze drifted to the opened box on the desk, to the bracelet that gleamed against the tissue paper.
    “Did you hear me?” Maggie asked.
    Lisa started. “Yes, of course. What’s wrong? Is one of the kids—”
    “No. It’s me.” Maggie’s voice sounded edgy. “I’m losing it, Lisa.
    The walls are closing in on me. I can’t breathe.”
    “Are you in the closet again?” Lisa demanded.
    “Yes, I’m in the closet. It’s the only place where I won’t be interrupted, where I can have two minutes to myself. It’s not the closet that’s making me crazy. It’s everything else. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fight with Roxy every morning about her clothes. I can’t drive Dylan all over town so he can play these damn sports, and I can’t take Mary Bea into Wal-Mart ever again, because my five-year-old stole two peanut butter cups and a giant-sized Hershey bar and I didn’t even notice until I got home and found chocolate smeared across her chin.”
    “Slow down,” Lisa said. “I don’t think Wal-Mart will toss you into jail over a couple of candy bars.”
    “I’m supposed to be okay, you know. It’s been almost a year. I should be getting over this by now.”
    “Honey, he was your husband. And you’ve been in love with him forever.
    You married him right out of high school. You might never get over him.”
    “I know, but I’m so angry, Lisa. He had to die and leave me with all this. It was Keith’s idea to buy this big, stupid house, you know. I never wanted this elephant of a mortgage, and it was his idea to have three kids; I would have stopped at two. It was his idea to go into the lab that night. Maggie voice faltered. “If he hadn’t gone to his office, he wouldn’t have been there when the lab exploded,” Maggie sobbed, as her emotions spilled out. “I told him to wait until the next morning…”
    Maggie’s sobs tore at Lisa’s heart. “Please don’t cry.”
    “He wouldn’t listen,” Maggie said with a sniff. “He never listened to me.”
    Every word Maggie uttered reminded Lisa of her own guilt, her own anger. And it was so pointless. “Maggie, you have to stop torturing yourself.”
    “Why? I’m torturing everyone else.”
    “You’re not.”
    “I am. I need you, Lisa. I’m desperate.”
    “Me? What about—your brothers?” God, she was pathetic. She couldn’t even say his name out loud.
    “I can’t reach Nick. He might be away for the weekend, Joe moved up to Monterey last year, remember? And his