The Best of Us Read Free Page B

filling her eyes again.
    “You need to,” Allie said. “Please. Just come.”
    “More Dora,” Jessica said, nestling against Tina’s body. Her eyelids were drooping. “More apple juice.”
    Allie reached over, grabbed the second apple juice box off the coffee table, and handed it to Jessica as Tina mouthed, “Thank you.”
    “We’ll let them watch lots of movies,” Allie said. “And order pizza. We can cook some stuff and leave it in the freezer beforehand so my mom won’t even have to worry about meals. Doesn’t that sound good, Jess?”
    “More Dora,” Jessica repeated, her voice almost robotic-sounding.
    “And they say TV doesn’t kill brain cells,” Tina joked. Allie could see something come into her friend’s eyes, something she hadn’t seen in a while. A brightness.
    “I may love you just as much as I love coffee,” Tina said. “And that’s saying something. Do you think when Pauline says we can get everything we want at the villa, that includes liposuction?”
    “Oh, sure,” Allie said. “We’ll squeeze it in before the champagne and caviar and after the deep-tissue massages.”
    Tina tilted her head back against the cushion, and a huge smile spread across her face. Allie held her breath.
    “I’m in,” Tina finally said.
    *   *   *
    “This house has amazing bones,” Savannah McGrivey said, being careful to keep her voice enthusiastic but not cross the line into gushing. No one trusted a gushing real estate agent.
    She led the way through the living room and into the dining room. “The crown molding is original, and so is the wainscoting.”
    She stepped back and let the fortyish, prosperous-looking couple take in the space in silence. They’d pulled up in a BMW convertible twenty minutes into her open house, after she’d lit an orange-blossom-scented candle and put bouquets of blue and yellow wildflowers in the powder room and decluttered and scrubbed the kitchen counters. You’d think the owners would’ve listened to her suggestions to move out some of the furniture to make the rooms seem bigger, to replace the paisley wallpaper in the dining room with a fresh coat of neutral paint, to tear up the worn runner on the stairs. Savannah had even e-mailed them the name of a reasonably priced contractor, but they’d acted almost offended.
    Isn’t our house good enough? the husband had asked as Savannah considered the dated family photos in ugly gold frames lining the wall above the staircase banister. She’d turned to him with a smile, mentally accepting the fact that the portraits of their bucktoothed, turtleneck-wearing kids would stay.
    “Of course it is,” she’d said.
    She hadn’t been lying. But couldn’t they see that good enough wouldn’t cut it—that a little extra effort could mean the difference between a sale and a future spent languishing on the market?
    She had an innate sense of how far she could push clients, and she knew it was time to let it go. But she began to question her decision as she saw her potential buyers notice the peeling edges of the wallpaper, the wife’s manicured fingernail tracing a seam like it was a scar.
    “What year was it built?” the husband asked. His potbelly strained against his blue golf shirt, and he rubbed it like he was trying to conjure good luck from a Buddha. He was probably hungry. Damn. She should’ve gone with freshly baked cookies instead of a scented candle.
    “Nineteen eighty-five,” Savannah said. Smile, she remindedherself, making sure to include the wife in her gaze. When Savannah had first opened the door, the wife had looked her up and down, then reached for her husband’s arm. Wives tended to react that way to Savannah.
    “Needs a little work,” the husband—Don? Dan? Did it matter?—said. “If you tore down this wall, opened up the kitchen . . . maybe bumped it out in back.”
    His wife yawned. She’d said they had young twin daughters; no way would they want to take on the hassle of a