Read Online Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares - Free Book Online Page A

A girl. A swimmer. A bather, you say? She must have drownedmany hours before. We regret to say we think this could be your friend.”
    There was a sound that came from somewhere. Maybe Carmen. Maybe her. Lena shook her head hard. There were these thoughts, these ideas, climbing, scraping, shouting to be let in, but she wouldn’t let them. She felt Bee’s arm shaking at the end of her hand. “I don’t think so. No. I don’t think she would go swimming. I think that must be somebody else.” Her voice didn’t sound like hers, it sounded strangely like Valia’s, impermeable, stubborn, and sure. No, that drowned swimmer must belong to somebody else’s tragedy. It didn’t feel like theirs.
    “Are you, any of you, her family? What you call next of kin? If someone could come to”—the police officer took out his handkerchief and wiped his face—“to identify the body, if it is your …”
    “The body fits the description you gave on the phone,” the younger partner offered solemnly in Greek. “If this is a mistake we are very, very sorry.”
    And if it wasn’t? Lena couldn’t help choking on the thought. What was he then?
    But it was a mistake. “She wouldn’t be swimming. It’s late October. Nobody goes swimming now,” Valia’s voice insisted, coming out of Lena’s mouth.
    The older one shook his head. “The beaches are full with bathers all day. This month is very warm. The water is still not so cold but the currents are dangerous.” The perspiration dripping down his temples seemed to make the point.
    There was that scratching wriggling somewhere under Lena’s skull, like mice that couldn’t escape, and how long could she continue to ignore them?
    “We are her friends,” Bridget said. It hurt Lena’s heart to see Bee’s mouth quiver like that.
    “All just friends? Not her family?”
    Bridget shook her head slowly. It felt like a heavy penance to be wrested from her at such a time. “Just friends. Not her family.”
    Lena needed only to glance at Carmen’s face to see the childlike rebellion going on in there. Just friends? More than family! Do you have any idea who we are?
    “Do you know where is her family? She is not married? We found some clothes and a mobile phone left overnight at the beach at Ammoudi. We think they could be hers. The phone is registered to a number in Australia. We tried to call it but we spoke only to a message machine.”
    “She lives in Australia now. Her family is in the United States. She is not married,” Bridget said.
    “We are like her family,” Carmen couldn’t keep herself from adding. Lena heard the sob at the end of it. It just hung there.
    Lena shook her head hard to try to relieve the scritch-scritch-scratching at the base of her skull. “We can call her parents,” Lena said. “If that’s what you need.”
    “You want that I call?” the older officer asked deferentially.
    Lena tried to breathe. “No, I don’t want you to call. I will call.”

This is the way the world ends
           Not with a bang
                    but a whimper.
          —T. S. Eliot

 
    It seemed to Bridget when she thought of it later that there had been two systems operating in her mind through that long day and that they had never matched up, like two wildly spinning gears not quite close enough to fit together.
    There was the small gear spinning the minute-by-minute things— Tibby is uncomfortable, why are they making her lie on that hard table? Her head hurts. Tibby, get off there . Her orange toenail polish, the familiar freckles along her shinbones, the glint of a tiny gold stud in her nose, the wrong color of her skin. Why was she stuck in a bag? How could she stand it? Tibby was the one who’d scream when you covered her with the blanket in hide-and-seek. Do not zip that up. No, please don’t. It is so cold in here. She could get sick . Regular colds went right to pneumonia with Tibby.
    The second gear spun with