Read Online Good Little Wives by Abby Drake - Free Book Online

her friends, Dana figured she was the one with the most time and opportunity to have an affair.
    But Lauren?
    God, she’d helped raise—was still raising—Bob’s kids; well, a good part of them. Forget the moral and emotional parts, how had she handled the logistics?
    â€œIt was like magic,” she explained to Dana. “You know how that goes.”
    No, Dana didn’t know how that went.
    Then, as if someone had pulled the plug from Lauren’s mouth, she spewed forth too much information.
    He touched me in places no man ever touched me!
    He entered me from the front and the back and once upside down!
    He loved to bury his face between my legs. Imagine! He did that for me!
    Dana refrained from commenting that now Vincent was buried again, this time in another damp, unfamiliar location.
    She hadn’t listened to the blah-blah of the remainder of Lauren’s verbal marathon. Instead she closed off her ears and studied her friend, the way her lips curved and curled, the way her slate-colored eyes twinkled like glitter, the way her body lilted and swayed as if she were reenacting one sexual foray after another.
    She probably thought it was safe to disclose her secret now that Vincent was dead and it would be her word against no one’s.
    But when she said he really had been an Italian Stallion, Lauren’s eyes glazed over and her body stopped lilting and she started to sob. “It’s not fair,” she cried. “He shouldn’t have left me for her.”
    Mistress or not, the woman was scorned.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Dana said, after an awkward minute of solace. “But I must get Steven to the airport.” She kissed Lauren’s cheek and departed the ladies’ room, feeling guilty that she was grateful to escape from a friend in distress.
    She didn’t tell Steven about Lauren’s confession.
    And now, driving up the highway, she thought about Vincent and his flagpole of a dick. And about the fact that he’d left Kitty for Yolanda, though he hadn’t left Kitty for Lauren. And that Lauren—despite her timid, saccharine veneer—was mightily pissed.
    Dana rolled the gum around in her mouth and decided that, on her way home, she must stop at the New Falls police station. If they knew another woman had once slept with Vincent, they might not be so quick to judge Kitty.
    Besides, Dana reasoned as she exited onto Route 87 North, they couldn’t force her to tell them Lauren’s name.

Ten
    Bridget started in Randall’s dressing room.
    She yanked open one built-in cherry drawer, then another:
    socks,
    socks,
    socks,
    briefs,
    briefs,
    briefs.
    How much of this merde did he have, anyway? How much did she? Did either of them really need several dozen sets of silk undergarments?
    Consumption, she thought. So American. Like the society pages that triggered this frenzy. It had been the thoughtof those pictures—lousy, grainy photos—that made Bridget think about passports.
    Were there any worse pictures than those pasted on passports?
    Then another thought sparked: Her husband would soon need his passport when he—not she—went to pick up Aimée.
    She spun from the drawers to the solid teak,
    hand-carved,
    velvet lined,
    twelve-drawer
    jewelry chest.
    Did men who lived outside New Falls have such opulent places to harbor their treasures?
    Certainly not Luc.
    She poked. She pried. She rummaged around.
    A tie pin from St. Andrew’s in Scotland.
    Silver cuff links from Tiffany’s that she’d given Randall on their tenth anniversary, bought with his money, which was also an American way.
    A small gold bracelet he’d worn in the eighties when men were trying out that sort of thing.
    But where was the ruby pinkie ring she’d given him when he’d agreed to let Aimée go to school in France?
    And where was his grandfather’s Patek Philippe watch?
    And where, mon dieu , was his passport?
    The safe! her