Season of Sisters (20 page)

"So that was it? You kissed and made up?"

"Oh no. Repairing our marriage took a lot of time and effort. I had to understand that our marriage hadn't failed because of one major episode—his affair—but because of lots of little careless ones committed by the both of us. I had to learn that forgiveness was really a gift I gave to myself, more than to Ben. Once I figured that out, the rest of it came easier. Except the trust, that is. That was the most difficult thing to rebuild."

"So how did you do that?" Holly asked.

"Counseling helped, but what really healed the wound was time. That and getting cancer."

"What?" Maggie asked.

Holly's chin dropped in shock.

Grace nodded. "Following my third chemo treatment, my hair started falling out in clumps. I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, sobbing my eyes out. When I stepped out of the shower, Ben was standing at the bathroom sink. He'd shaved his head."

"How sweet," Holly said.

Maggie sniffed, unwilling to let the man completely off the hook for cheating on his wife.

"I realized I wasn't the least bit surprised. I'd known he'd be there for me. I'd known I could count on him. That's when I knew for certain and without a doubt that we'd make it. I trusted him. We had survived adultery and our marriage was stronger than ever. That knowledge gave me strength. Ben gave me strength. Then and every day since."

Holly asked, "Why have you told us all this?"

Grace gave them a Mona Lisa smile. "I thought maybe you needed to hear it. Maybe I needed to hear myself say it. As you know, I've been impatient with Ben of late. This morning he did something sweet—just a little something, mind you—and it reminded me of how lucky I am. How lucky we are."

"Are you saying Holly and I should overlook debutantes and bimbos?"

"Not at all. That's a choice that only the individual can make. I just thought it was something you, my friends, should know under the circumstances."

Circumstances, Maggie knew, being Justin's and Mike's wandering eyes and maybe something else.

When Sadie appeared at the back door, a stack of scrapbooks in her hand, Grace rose from her seat and walked toward the stoop. Pausing, she took Holly's hand, then Maggie's. "I thought you should know about this because the two of you are working so very hard on my anniversary plans."

"I want you to know that this party is more than an event to mark the fiftieth year of our marriage. It is more than a celebration of love. It's a celebration of life. The happiness
and
the heartaches. You know that old saying about what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Well, I am the perfect example of it. Ben's betrayal could have killed our partnership. It was as powerful and as destructive as the cancer. But in effect, it prepared us for the battle to come. We couldn't know that at the time, of course, which is the point I want to make to the two of you. I want you to think about that in the context of your own situations. I think it could help you."

Maggie and Holly sat silently for a time. Maggie mulled over Grace's revelation, tried to put it into context with her and Mike's situation. Similarities existed, but so, too, did differences. Mike denied cheating on her. Did she believe him?

Maggie simply couldn't say. Believing what she wanted to be true came harder, because she could be fooling herself.

A puff of breeze stirred the leaves of the tall cotton-wood tree that shaded the backyard and sent the swing made of rope and a weathered board swaying. The smell of freshly turned dirt drifted on the air and mixed with the kitchen scents of cinnamon and peaches to create that unique aroma that Maggie associated with family and the farm. She knew a sudden and now familiar soul-deep yearning for the past and the way life used to be. Before her boys grew up. Before Mike and she grew apart.

Back when who she was and what she did mattered. Hugging her knees, she tried to pinpoint exactly when she had lost herself—long before losing Mike.

Chapter 9

Holly
tracked down the puppies to a shady spot beside an empty tin watering tub set inside the fence of an overgrown corral. Four of them cavorted under and around the legs of a sawhorse, tumbling, yipping, and yelping. Their antics distracted her and made her smile, quite an accomplishment on this particular day.

Holly leaned against the fence railing, soaking up sunshine, inhaling the scent of wild onion that drifted from a patch of greens alongside the barn. A flash of red to her right caught her eye and Holly turned her head to see Maggie strolling toward her.

"Aunt Sadie sent me to tell you fried chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and beans will be served on the back picnic table in ten minutes. I'm not the least bit hungry after two pieces of cake, but I know from personal experience with Aunt Sadie's fried chicken that I'll indulge until my seams are near to splitting. How 'bout you, sugar? Ready for lunch?"

"Yeah. Sure." Holly shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have much of an appetite."

"Still fretting about Justin?"

Holly rescued one of the puppies who'd scrambled to the top of a nearby hay bale and couldn't get down. "I keep thinking about Grace and Ben. How they made it. It's nice."

"Very nice," Maggie agreed.

"I keep coming back to the friendship thing. Sounds like that's when their marriage ran into trouble, when they stopped being friends. What about you and Mike, Maggie? Did you guys stop being friends before you stopped being lovers?"

Maggie rested her arms along the top fence rail. She stared at the bright red polish on her fingernails as she considered the question. "I guess we did, although if you had asked me a month ago, I would have denied it. Looking back, I realize we developed separate circles of friends. Mike had the people from work, and I had the bowheads."

"Bowheads?"

"The PTA moms. For a few years there, hair bows were quite the style for mothers of elementary school students. One of my boys made up the name and it stuck."

"Must run in the family. Did Lies-a-Lot Lehrman grow up to be a bowhead?"

"You betcha. PTA president. Wore a different bow every day for a year."

Holly bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud.

"How about you? Do you and Justin have different circles of friends?"

"No. My friends have blended with his into one group." She whipped her head around and turned a wide-eyed gaze on Maggie. "I've lost them, too, haven't I? I didn't even realize. I've been holed up by myself and I haven't called anyone, but no one has called me, either. Why haven't they called? Any of them?"

She sighed heavily, her spirits sinking. Glumly, she muttered, "I don't have any friends anymore, do I? I might as well move off. No one will miss me."

"Why, Holly Weeks. If that's not the meanest thing you've ever said to me." Maggie shot to her feet. "What am I? And Grace? Chopped liver?"

"Oh, that sounded bad. I'm sorry. That's not what I meant." She threw her arm around Maggie's shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "You and Grace
are
my friends. Dear friends. Funny, isn't it, how fast that has come about."

"We're like soldiers. We've been through the Battle of the Bathroom together. Such a thing brings females together."

Holly's lips twitched with the faintest of smiles. "I think I'm very lucky to have you in my life. I don't know how I would have managed these past few weeks without you."

"That's better. I guess I won't have to beat you up, after all." Maggie returned Holly's hug, then said, "It's come along fast for me, too. My friendships usually begin somewhere other than ladies' rooms, and they develop slowly over lunches and shopping trips. We bonded in the bathroom and never looked back. We skipped right over being casual friends and went straight to being close friends, don't you agree?"

Holly pursed her lips, her expression turning thoughtful. Then she shook her head. "No, Maggie, I don't agree. From my point of view, we've gone beyond close. I think we're already to the necklace wearing stage."

"Necklace wearing stage?"

"I learned this from my students. There is a shop in the mall where my girls buy necklaces for their best friends. The pendants come in different sizes, but are usually hearts. They are broken in two pieces. One half says 'Best' and the other says 'Friends.'"

"I love it. That's just the sort of thing I missed, having only boys. I adore girl stuff like that. Tell me, do any of them break into threes?"

"Yes, I believe they do."

"Then we need necklaces. You, me, and Grace. What do you say?"

"I think it's a great idea. Although Grace might not agree. Her Best Friend heart pendant is split with Ben."

Maggie dismissed the notion with a wave. "But he's a guy. Isn't it a girl thing? They don't let guys in on a ritual like this, do they?"

"Not ordinarily, no. But twelve-and thirteen-year-old girls are at different places than we are when it comes to building friendships. Up until last night, I'd have given the other half of my Best Friend pendant to Justin. Before your trouble with Mike, you'd have given it to him."

Maggie pursed her lips and pondered. "No, I don't believe I would have. I haven't considered Mike Prescott to be my best friend for years."

"Really?"

"Surprises you, doesn't it? Makes you think that's a clear sign of when my marriage started going wrong. Isn't that what greeting card philosophy implies, that your spouse is always supposed to be your best friend? Well, I don't think that's necessarily so. I have a different theory when it comes to combining friends and lovers. It's something I've been thinking about these last few weeks. I think it all goes back to biology."

Holly's brows arched. "What do you mean?"

"I think there are times in our lives when friends are more important to us than lovers and vice versa. Think about it. When we're girls the ages of your students, who is more important to us? Not those knucklehead boys we're learning to flirt with. Our best friends are other girls because they can give us what we need at that point in our lives: trust and loyalty and compassion. Intimacy."

"Don't forget fickleness and cruelty," Holly said with a snort. "Middle-school girls love teaching those lessons."

"Yes, and those lessons help us later on, don't they? Now, I admit it all starts to change when our biological clock begins running things. Mind you, I'm talking in generalities here. I know not every woman feels that particular tick. However, I think that for the majority of women, when you strip away the veneer of civilization all the way down to the animal, the need to procreate is about as strong an instinct as we have. At that point, advances in medical science aside, we need a man to give us what we want."

"So it's good-bye girlfriends and hello honey?"

Maggie shrugged. "Isn't that the way it usually happens? Men are jealous souls and they don't like to share. More often than not, friendships suffer when a lover comes into the picture. But that's okay with us because at that point in our lives, we need our lovers more than we need our friends. So, is it any surprise that lovers become best friends?"

"Wait a minute." Holly waved away a fly that buzzed around her ankles. "I don't agree. You're making it sound like a friendship between a man and a woman is a second-class friendship. Also, women are just as jealous when it comes to their lover's friends. Need I say anything more than 'poker night'?"

"You're right. I'm not making myself clear. I'm not saying a lover's friendship is second class, I'm saying it's different. Sex makes it different, and in my opinion, not necessarily more intimate. But it's the friendship a woman needs while she's having her babies and making a home for them. You see, as long as a woman has young children, she is dependent on a man. She needs him for emotional and financial support. She needs him for—"

"Maggie!" Holly protested. "Have you checked the calendar lately? This is not 1950. Women have come a long way. We can support ourselves, thank you very much. The last statistics I saw said there are more single mothers raising children in America today than married moms. That's reality."

"That's
hard
reality, Holly. Very hard reality. Raising my boys was the hardest job I ever had, the toughest one I can imagine. The most rewarding job I will ever have. Through it all, I shared the ups and downs of it with the one person who understood, my children's father. He didn't interfere with the job I was doing, but he supported me in it. Mike was the perfect best friend for me during those years. He cared. He was who I needed."

Maggie paused and cleared her throat. "I was who he needed, too. Mike was raised by old-fashioned parents in an old-fashioned family in an old-fashioned town. He needed to be the breadwinner. He needed to be the head of the household. Proud, stubborn, arrogant. He needed to be the boss and I let him. That's what he'd been taught. That's what made him Mike Prescott."

"So what happened?" Holly asked as the clang of a dinner bell drifted toward the corral.

Maggie pushed off the fence and gestured for Holly to follow her. Their shoes flattened ankle-high green grass as they forged a path toward the back of the house. "The boys grew up, grew independent. The dynamics of our family changed. They stood up to him, challenged him. Competed with him. Learned from him. Turned to him. Some days the testosterone in our house was so thick I worried I'd grow a beard. Mike loved it. I didn't. I felt left out and Mike had new friends. I wished my boys had all been born girls."