Page 14 of The Wilder Widows

Alice shrugged. “My staff is used to me not coming home. But Agnes really does make the best Bloody Marys. Marge, just call your mom. Tell her you’re not dead in a ditch and let’s go! Why not? What else do we have to do today?”

“Never. Drinking. Again.” I shook my head.

“Oh, come on, ladies. We just started having fun in this widow’s club. Don’t wuss out on me now.”

“I think one night of binge drinking was plenty, Alice,” I said. “My head is pounding, Doris still looks green, and I don’t trust Marge not to make her puke again. Knitting is starting to sound good.”

“How can I knit with my hands like this?” Doris lifted her hands, and we stared at them for a moment while they trembled. “I can’t knit! How can I knit?”

“We’re not knitting.” Marge slammed her empty glass back down. “I’m not going out like that.”

“Wait...” Alice started, and I watched her eyes raking my living room. “Didn’t we make some kind of a bucket list of wishes last night?”

The memory of our moment of solidarity crashed back into my mind. “Yes! We did!”

“Where is that basket?” Alice stood and searched around my living room. “Here!” She reached down behind the couch and came up, clutching the colorful basket.

“Oh, yeah!” Marge laughed and pointed. “I forgot about that.”

“What are you doing with my knitting basket?” Doris asked, scrunching her brow.

“Remember, Doris? We all wrote down one crazy wish we want to do before we die.”

“We did? I don’t remember that.” The lines in her brow deepened. “Wait. Where are my knitting supplies?”

“On the floor.” Marge pointed to the pile of yarn and needles.

“My stuff!” Doris hustled over to it and dropped to her knees, pulling the remnants of her knitting supplies into her lap. “It’s a mess!”

Alice tossed up her hand. “Forget the knitting shit, Doris. What’s important is these wishes in here. The wishes we promised to help each other fulfill.”

“We were drunk. We’re not actually doing that, Alice.” I scoffed. “Are we?”

“To hell we aren’t!” Marge stood up, and Alice stepped to her side, nodding in solidarity.

“We are?” I tried to remember my wish and then snorted when it came back to me. “We really are?”

“Hell yeah, we are. We made a pact. A Wilder Widows pact. And we are doing it. A promise is a promise.”

Marge crossed her arms and nodded in agreement.

Alice stood firm at Marge’s side. “We’ve all got life insurance from our dead husbands and nothing but time on our hands. Why not, ladies? It’s time for the Wilder Widows to get a little wilder! We’re doing this.”

When I remembered my wish, I realized it was something I’d always wanted to do, and something I still could. It wasn’t too late. Was it? The same excitement I’d felt when I wrote it down bubbled up inside me again.

“I don’t remember what I wished,” Doris said, setting her knitting supplies on the table. “Let me look and see what it says.”

“No!” Alice turned away, clutching the knitting basket to her chest. “We open one at a time, drawn at random. And no one can tell anyone what their wish is until it’s pulled.”

“But I don’t know what mine is!” Doris stomped.

Alice tipped up her chin. “Good. Then it will be a surprise to you as well. It’s what your deepest desire was with whiskey as your truth serum.”

The moment she said ‘whiskey,’ I watched Doris’s now-returning color drain away once again. She bolted for the bathroom, the sound of the slamming door prefacing the retching that started again.

“You said it this time, not me.” Marge smirked and gave Alice the side-eye. “She’s surprisingly fast.” Marge stared at the spot Doris had just been.

“Yes. Quite nimble,” Alice agreed, pinching her brow.