Read Online The Girls of Tonsil Lake by Liz Flaherty - Free Book Online

plan on writing in Maine, that it was going to be a vacation from life,” he said, “but you may as well stop breathing. You wrote your first book sitting on the bleachers at football practices, your second one sitting beside my mother’s bed for days and nights on end because she was afraid she’d die alone, and this last one even though you’re unhappy. You’re always going to write.”
    “I’m not unhappy.” The protest was automatic.
    He grinned at me. “Right, and I can drive a ball as far as Tiger Woods and putt like Phil Mickelson.”
    I’d watched enough golf on television to know better than that. “Really,” I said, touching the keyboard of the laptop, “I’m not.” I leaned in to kiss him hello, feeling the brush of his day-old beard on my cheek. “What do I have to be unhappy about?”
    “I don’t know that,” he said. “Maybe if I did, I could do something about it.”
    I shrugged. “Menopausal women, honey. You know what they say.” I kissed him again. “I love the laptop, though. Does its software match mine so I can work back and forth?”
    “Yes, it does. Tim and Brian went with me to get it, and Josh even drove up to meet us with a list of stuff Laurie said you would need on it. It was like Keystone Cops in the computer store, with all three of them telling the salesman what we needed.” He reached across the computer for another plastic bag. “Kelly sent orders to get you this. Said it wasn’t something you’d buy yourself, but that you’d need it.”
    The leather attaché was small, slim, and soft, with room for the computer and whatever other writing paraphernalia I carried with me. I could actually put my wallet and keys in it and forego carrying a purse for the first time since entering junior high.
    I could suddenly see myself getting on the plane. No purse holding everything but the kitchen sink, no canvas tote I always used in lieu of a briefcase. I felt excitement shiver along underneath my skin. It would be a new kind of freedom for Jean O’Toole.
    Freedom.
    Free writing, that’s what it was called, what I’d been doing on the computer all afternoon!
    I turned toward it with every intention of deleting it, but a look in the corner of the screen informed me I had written fifteen pages. I shook my head and named the file before saving it. Then, with a little “why not?” shrug, I saved it to a jump drive, too, and tucked it into the new attaché along with several others.
    Later, David and I sat on the couch together and watched an old movie. At one point, he turned to me and said, “I just want to be sure you’ll come back to me when it’s over.” He rubbed a hand up my arm and ran a finger under the armhole of my dress.
    I knew he wasn’t only talking about the trip to Maine when he mentioned “it” being over. He wanted his cheerful wife back, the Pollyanna who had a smile and a good meal for him on the worst of days. Well, I wanted something back, too; I wanted a husband with a direction that took him further than the Fallen Tree Golf Course.
    We were in a trap, I realized. He kept thinking he was going to come home to Carrie, Josh, and Kelly’s mother, the good daughter and daughter-in-law, the dutiful wife, and instead he returned to a woman who went through the motions on automatic pilot. As for me, I kept expecting the company vice-president I’d known for so long: in command and in demand and never falling short in either category.
    We loved each other, these two virtual strangers on a leather couch in a custom-built house in the Willow Woods subdivision. We had loved each other through early marriage poverty, children’s emergencies, a brief affair on David’s part, the deaths of all of our parents, and the empty nest. But was it enough? Would it ever again be enough?
    Suzanne
    Andie was yelling again. I sighed and continued to lay out my underwear in sets.
    “How could you?” she shouted. “How could you be so stupid? How could you try to