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“Remember when Mom used to smash aspirin and mix it with sugar on a spoon?”
Allie smiled. “She got the idea from Mary Poppins.”
“It didn’t work.”
“At all.”
They drank their wine. Allie set her glass down on the floor and swished the dress back and forth in the tub. “I’m so going to regret this tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
“And the wine. And the party. And probably everything about every decision I’ve made in the past … oh, three years.”
“I’m a week ahead of you there.”
Allie tilted her head. “How’s life looking from the future?”
May drained her glass and smiled down at the dregs. “The sex is great. I can’t recommend much else about it.”
Allie opened the drain and lifted her sodden, hideous, purple-brown half-dyed wedding dress out of the water. “Because I’m only two glasses of wine down, and I’m clearly taking your place as the tactful sister, I’m going to refrain from saying anything about my sex life right now.”
May inclined her glass appreciatively in Allie’s direction.
“But I will say this.” She raised the dress high in the air. Pinkish water dripped over the lip of the tub and onto May’s white bath rug. “I am certainly not going to get any action while wearing this dress.”
“No, I don’t think there’s any risk of that. But there probably wasn’t anyway. It’s not tactful to score with a bride who’s just jilted her fiancé. Not when he’s at the party.”
“Yeah, I hear you there. And it’s important to be tactful above all things.”
“We don’t want to get a reputation. Those Fredericks girls.”
“They might be man-eaters, but they have excellent manners.”
May snorted, and that set Allie giggling. She slumped off the lip of the tub and dropped to the floor, still straight-armed, holding her bridal gown in the air. The longer she looked at it, the harder she laughed, and the sight made May laugh, too, until her face hurt and her knees went weak. She slid down the wall, eyes streaming, and pressed her cheek against Allie’s back.
They stayed like that. Collapsed in a heap, dizzy and tipsy and light-headed with laughter and life.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It was only a four-mile drive to the farm. He parked on the shoulder of the road and walked the quarter mile of gravel, holding his breath as he rounded the corner and the house came into view.
It was only a house. Two stories of dingy white clapboard with green shutters.
A cedar-shake planter full of chrysanthemums stood beside the back steps, dark red and bright orange. His father’s boots occupied the right side of the landing, same as they always had.
Two pairs of kid-size boots listed over on the step below them.
He found no other evidence of his father’s second family. No tire swing, no play structure, no Big Wheels in the front yard.
Ben wondered if these kids paged through the Sears catalogs, dreaming about toys they were never going to get. If they had an endless list of chores to do but no money, nothing of their own. If their father frowned and muttered if they even dared to suggest the possibility of an allowance.
The old barn appeared as likely to collapse at any moment as it had when Ben last saw it. The new barn had a fresh coat of paint. Set at an angle beyond it was the familiar long, low shape of the chicken house, a gleam of sunlight reflecting off its tin roof.
A silhouette appeared behind the screen door. When it opened, Dean Hausman stood there.
Smaller than Ben remembered, like everything else.
Ben hadn’t been up here since he and Sandy were about to get married. The visit started out awkward and went downhill fast.
