The Last Time I Saw Paris Read Free Page B

the token retirement gold watch.”
    â€œLar, that’s not true,” Vannie said quickly. “Bill would never do that to you.”
    But Susie’s shrewd eyes met hers across the table. “So why didn’t you tell us about this earlier? I thought we always told each other everything. Wasn’t that the pact?”
    Their childhood vow had been sealed in blood scratched from their wrists with a tiny gold safety pin. Lara could remember Susie howling with the pain.Now Susie’s eyes were filled with a different pain for her friend.
    â€œWhy didn’t I say something?” She shrugged again, defeated. “I was ashamed, I guess.”
    â€œAshamed?
Is
that
what women are supposed to feel when our husbands run around on us? We should be
ashamed!”
Delia was outraged. “You should know better, Lara.”
    â€œOh, God, it’s so hard, it’s just so hard.” Lara hung her head, letting her hair shield her tears from them.
    The Girlfriends looked at one another, stunned. For once no one knew what to say. Lara was the most unselfish woman they knew. She gave one hundred percent of herself. Everything she had would be yours if you were in need. She had always been there for her children,
and
for that selfish bastard Bill, who had taken advantage of her goodness, her niceness. She wasn’t a saint, just good-hearted. Now, they felt for her. Of all the women to be dumped, Lara was the most defenseless.
    â€œI woke up this morning,” Lara whispered. “I was suddenly forty-five years old. And somewhere along the road of life I knew I had lost myself. I felt like nobody. Nothing.”
    â€œYou are who you always were.” Vannie flung a loving arm around her. “You’re no different. It’s …” She stopped, afraid to voice what she was thinking: that it was Bill Lewis who was different now. Success and dedication to his work had changed him. While Lara had brought up the children, kept the home fires burning, Bill had been forging ahead in his career. “What you need, honey, is a marriage counselor,” she decided firmly. “Bring Bill to his senses.”
    â€œOr else a shrink,” Susie suggested.
    â€œThe hell with it. What you need is a good day’sshopping.” Delia slammed her fist angrily on the table, sending glasses crashing. “Screw Bill. Go out and spend all his money. If he’s really in Beijing with Melissa Kenney, he deserves it. Go. Buy Gucci and Armani. Buy shoes and sexy lingerie. Make the bastard feel the pain in his pocket. I’ll bet when he sees you decked out in Italy’s best black labels and with the
La Perla
underneath, that bitch Melissa won’t stand a chance.”
    Despite her pain, Lara was laughing. But shopping was not her game. She just wasn’t a dress-up kind of woman. She shook her head, her tearful brown eyes warm with affection. “Whatever would I do without you,” she said.
    It was a statement, not a question, and instinctively each woman reached out her left hand to the center of the table, clasping the others’ tightly. “All for one and one for All,” they intoned, using the words they had snitched from Alexander Dumas’s
The Three Musketeers
when they were just seven years old and had sealed their pact in blood.
    Lara signaled the waiter and ordered four more margaritas, adding guiltily, “I’d like straight tequila but I thought it might look bad.”
    She was so serious that they laughed. “Oh, Lara, what do we care how things look anymore?” Delia asked. “I thought we had finally reached the age where we could just be ourselves.”
    And so did I, Lara thought sadly, as she sipped the frosty margarita. Oh, Bill, so did I.
    Â 
    Driving back to her empty house in smart Pacific Heights, Lara spotted the red bathing suit in a store window. High-cut legs, low-cut top, slinky. Sexy. Impulsively,she raced into the