Read Online The Never Never Sisters by L. Alison Heller - Free Book Online
Authors: L. Alison Heller
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though, and this—one-dimensional and hopeless—wasn’t my Dave. Had this guy
asked me out four years prior, I would have given him the wrong number.
I could see, though, how being so ambitious and devoted could result in Dave’s now
being completely unmoored, how someone’s strengths could, in great concentration,
become his weakness, curdling those same characteristics you initially found so attractive.
I checked myself for the unfairness. Had Dave upon meeting me known how frequently
I’d make him rehash things he didn’t want to, or, for that matter, had he seen me
first thing in the morning instead of after an hour of grooming, he probably wouldn’t
have asked for my number in the first place.
We were past all of that now. We had committed to each other, for better or curdled
worse.
“Trust me.” Dave’s gaze charged into mine as though he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“You can’t understand what this is like for me.”
“I think your perspective is off.”
“No, I mean, it’s good that you can’t. Your life has been simple, easy. I don’t fault
you for it. It’s the kind of life someone should have.” His voice broke on the next
words. “But I was nothing before this job. Just hard work poured into one goal. I’ve
done everything anyone has ever asked of me at work. And now”—he snapped his fingers,
which were in his lap—“it’s gone.”
I felt cut by his words. Sloane’s disappearance and the void that followed had been
neither simple nor easy. But how would Dave have known how panicked I now felt about
her arrival? It was news to even me. Apparently, there was a leak in the neat little
“Sloane” container in my brain. It was like I’d opened up my bag to find that my thermos
had dripped milky, sweet coffee over everything inside, leaving it damp and permanently
pungent. I put my hand on his leg. “What you’ve built is not gone, Dave. But even
if it were, you can build it again somewhere else.”
The cab picked up some speed, edging north on the West Side Highway. Dave fiddled
with the seat belt nylon and stared straight ahead. “I feel like I’m drowning.”
At home, Dave slouched on the couch and turned on the fireworks. I scanned the shelves
of the refrigerator for food, picturing that Midwestern family looking up at the exploding
reds and blues, tentatively nibbling at the roast beef sandwiches, weighing the temptations
of the food against the likelihood that I cooked with arsenic.
When I heard the booms of the 1812 Overture, I stuck my head into the living room
to watch, but Dave had switched the channel to financial news. I tiptoed past him
into his office. Not that I wasn’t allowed in there—I just thought it’d be easier
to avoid the discussion. At his desk, I unfolded the newspaper that had earlier made
him flinch. We didn’t have a subscription to the
Metropolitan
, and I wondered: if Dave hadn’t left our apartment, how had he managed to pick up
a copy? I started to read, hoping it could tell me something about my husband’s state
of mind.
Donald DeFranza was almost home, his key in his hand, about to unlock the front door
of his luxury four-story mansion in Englewood, New Jersey, when they swarmed. As his
two young children and wife watched horrified from the living room window, DeFranza
was surrounded from all sides by federal agents. Before they could touch him, though,
he collapsed on the front steps.
“It was crazy,” said Byron James, his neighbor. “The feds came up on him and the guy
just fainted. He would have cracked his freaking head open, but he fell right over
one of the shrubs. Lucky, I guess.”
Or not. The first words DeFranza heard when he came to? “You’re under arrest!”
Authorities have not yet released many details on DeFranza, thirty-five, the latest
Wall Streeter caught in the insider trading scandal hovering around Jelly Rocher of
Mission
asked me out four years prior, I would have given him the wrong number.
I could see, though, how being so ambitious and devoted could result in Dave’s now
being completely unmoored, how someone’s strengths could, in great concentration,
become his weakness, curdling those same characteristics you initially found so attractive.
I checked myself for the unfairness. Had Dave upon meeting me known how frequently
I’d make him rehash things he didn’t want to, or, for that matter, had he seen me
first thing in the morning instead of after an hour of grooming, he probably wouldn’t
have asked for my number in the first place.
We were past all of that now. We had committed to each other, for better or curdled
worse.
“Trust me.” Dave’s gaze charged into mine as though he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“You can’t understand what this is like for me.”
“I think your perspective is off.”
“No, I mean, it’s good that you can’t. Your life has been simple, easy. I don’t fault
you for it. It’s the kind of life someone should have.” His voice broke on the next
words. “But I was nothing before this job. Just hard work poured into one goal. I’ve
done everything anyone has ever asked of me at work. And now”—he snapped his fingers,
which were in his lap—“it’s gone.”
I felt cut by his words. Sloane’s disappearance and the void that followed had been
neither simple nor easy. But how would Dave have known how panicked I now felt about
her arrival? It was news to even me. Apparently, there was a leak in the neat little
“Sloane” container in my brain. It was like I’d opened up my bag to find that my thermos
had dripped milky, sweet coffee over everything inside, leaving it damp and permanently
pungent. I put my hand on his leg. “What you’ve built is not gone, Dave. But even
if it were, you can build it again somewhere else.”
The cab picked up some speed, edging north on the West Side Highway. Dave fiddled
with the seat belt nylon and stared straight ahead. “I feel like I’m drowning.”
At home, Dave slouched on the couch and turned on the fireworks. I scanned the shelves
of the refrigerator for food, picturing that Midwestern family looking up at the exploding
reds and blues, tentatively nibbling at the roast beef sandwiches, weighing the temptations
of the food against the likelihood that I cooked with arsenic.
When I heard the booms of the 1812 Overture, I stuck my head into the living room
to watch, but Dave had switched the channel to financial news. I tiptoed past him
into his office. Not that I wasn’t allowed in there—I just thought it’d be easier
to avoid the discussion. At his desk, I unfolded the newspaper that had earlier made
him flinch. We didn’t have a subscription to the
Metropolitan
, and I wondered: if Dave hadn’t left our apartment, how had he managed to pick up
a copy? I started to read, hoping it could tell me something about my husband’s state
of mind.
Donald DeFranza was almost home, his key in his hand, about to unlock the front door
of his luxury four-story mansion in Englewood, New Jersey, when they swarmed. As his
two young children and wife watched horrified from the living room window, DeFranza
was surrounded from all sides by federal agents. Before they could touch him, though,
he collapsed on the front steps.
“It was crazy,” said Byron James, his neighbor. “The feds came up on him and the guy
just fainted. He would have cracked his freaking head open, but he fell right over
one of the shrubs. Lucky, I guess.”
Or not. The first words DeFranza heard when he came to? “You’re under arrest!”
Authorities have not yet released many details on DeFranza, thirty-five, the latest
Wall Streeter caught in the insider trading scandal hovering around Jelly Rocher of
Mission
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