Read Online Off Season by Jean Stone - Free Book Online

do?”
    Rita shrugged. “Well, I’m forty-six. I guess I’ll have an abortion.” She tucked her red curls behind her ears and did not look at Jill. “I had two, you know.” She shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t know. You were long gone to the big city by then.” She cleared her throat. “One was in seventy-eight, one in seventy-nine. They were both summer things. With tourists, like I shouldn’t have known better. Anyway, I had the abortions, and they didn’t matter.”
    The air grew silent again as Jill listened to her best friend’s confession, her best friend’s pain. Then she put her arm around Rita’s shoulders. “I know you, Rita, and I know that they mattered.”
    Rita lowered her head, and a tear slid from her eyes. “But I was smart after that,” she said, with a short laugh. “I went on the Pill. Until a couple of years ago. After Kyle died, well, I guess I lost interest in most everything. Life. Living. Sex.”
    Listening to her best friend, Jill tried to determine if she’d known that Rita had lost interest in life, in living. She’d acted the same. But maybe
acted
was the key word. Rita had acted the way people expected her to behave. Not unlike the way Jill had been acting all day, carrying on with her business as if her husband had not beenarrested for one of the sickest crimes imaginable, as if feelings, pain, or anger did not happen.
    “Go ahead, say it,” Rita interrupted Jill’s thoughts. “Obviously I didn’t lose enough interest in sex not to do it.”
    Jill took back her arm and drew tiny lines in the sand by her feet. “I wasn’t thinking about that, Rita. Honest.”
    Rita sighed. “Well, I did have sex a few times. But only with Charlie.”
    A quiet grin formed on Jill’s lips. “No kidding,” she said. “So Charlie is …”
    Rita nodded. “The father of my child. The second time around.” She picked up another stone, examined it, then set it back on the ground.
    “Rita,” Jill said, “this is wonderful.” This time she said it, because she truly felt it.
    But Rita’s glance said she didn’t agree. “Why is it so wonderful?” she asked, her tone turning acrid. “I’m too old to have a kid. Besides, what if it turns out not right?” A note of fear had crept into her voice.
    “That won’t happen,” Jill said quickly. “There are ways of finding out today. There are tests.”
    Rita shook her head. “I liked things the way they were. The way they’ve been.”
    “But the time inevitably comes for us to move on. As long as we let it.” The time had come for Jill the day she’d met Ben. “I keep hoping Amy will be able to move on. I think she might have a crush on one of the young men I’ve hired.”
    “Amy is Amy. As for me, I’m too old. It’s too late to start over.”
    “That’s crap, and you know it. Look at me and Ben.” Speaking his name nearly closed off her airway, nearly made her reveal the injustice that had happened at the whim of that … child.
    “You and Ben,” Rita commented before Jill changedher mind. “My mother says you’re the all-American family now. But tell me, Jill, are you pregnant, too?”
    “Of course not.” The words shot out too quickly before she could check them. “I mean, Ben is older than we are. We’re not planning …”
    Rita nodded. “Neither was I. Nor was I planning to get married.”
    “But now?”
    “Well, for one thing, Charlie has stopped proposing. I think he’s found someone else. Besides, why should ‘now’ make a difference? I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing. I wouldn’t be good at marriage, Jill. I’ve always known that. I’m too—I don’t know. Too independent.”
    “Bull. What you are is too damn scared. Well, you have a right to happiness, my friend. But you have to give yourself the chance.”
    Rita did not respond.
    Jill looked down at the waves. “Trapped on an island in the middle of the sea,” she said quietly. “That’s