Read Online All the Single Ladies by Dorothea Benton Frank - Free Book Online

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    â€œPickle? Let’s brush your hair. We’re going out to the beach! You want to go to the beach?”
    She began her dance of abandon, a combination of running backward, stopping to run in a quick circle, and then a bark and more moving backward until we reached the spot by the back door where I hung her leashes. Then she sat quietly, waiting with a pounding heart while I attached the retractable one to her collar. Pickle was going to the beach and she was thrilled.
    It was hot outside but what else was new? I’d given up looking at the thermometer. All it did was depress me. I turned over the engine of the car, blasting the air-­conditioning, and got out again to let Pickle water the grass. She sniffed around and found a spot to leave her visiting card.
    â€œGood girl!”
    I would’ve sworn my dog was smiling when she hopped in the backseat and I looked at her in my rearview mirror. She was in the passenger seat opposite me with her tongue hanging out, panting a little but positioned like royalty in her special doggie seat. She was simply adorable.
    We took our time driving slowly in the beach traffic across the causeway. Every weekend hundreds of ­people came to the islands for a swim and a megadose of vitamin D, and they slowed traffic to the point that travel time was easily doubled or tripled, especially if the drawbridge opened. But it was the kind of delay I didn’t mind at all. Usually there were a few sailboats with their sails unfurled, gliding across the water. They were beautiful to watch. To my right and left were fields of sun-­soaked spartina, as dense as the pelt of a mink, each blade long and green, drinking up the brackish water in the salt marsh where it grew. Great numbers of snowy egrets peeked in and out of the marsh grass. When they lifted into flight they looked like a band of angels. No, I didn’t mind the delay at all.
    Eventually I crossed the Ben Sawyer Bridge onto Sullivans Island. The fire department’s sign announcing the date of their annual fish fry was to my right. And there was another sign warning about public consumption of alcohol and the fine you’d have to pay if you were caught. The fine was as wacky as the law was ill-­conceived. Why one thousand and forty dollars? Why not eleven hundred or a mere one thousand? And truly, when it was over a hundred degrees, there was nothing in all this whole wide world more appealing than a freezing-­cold beer. I guessed the Town Fathers felt Sullivans Island’s society of residents and guests could no longer rely on their own common sense and decorum and that they must be policed. When I was a younger woman there was no such law and beer drinking never resulted in mayhem. In fact, the overserved usually dozed off and woke up sunburned. The island’s dog laws were even worse.
    I made a left on Jasper Boulevard behind a long line of cars and we inched along like an army of ants until we reached Breach Inlet and crossed another small bridge onto the Isle of Palms. I looked in amazement at all the expensive cars ­people were driving. Every third car was German or a superexpensive SUV. Not that I wanted either one but I couldn’t help wondering how all these ­people could afford the luxury. Could they all be that successful?
    â€œNah,” I said out loud, and then to Pickle, “they’re probably in debt up to their eyeballs. They ought to know what I know about how your world can change in a flash with just a few wrong decisions. Right?”
    Pickle barked in agreement.
    â€œWell, at least we have each other,” I said, and smiled.
    Suzanne’s house was right across the street from the ocean. I pulled up in the driveway, got out, put Pickle on her leash, and gave the place a good look. It was an old clapboard house, a classic island cottage with a deep screened porch and a red tin roof. This was my favorite style of beach house. The front steps were made