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Back Ladies of the House Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Praise
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. January
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. February
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. March
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. April
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Twenty
  30. Twenty-One
  31. Twenty-Two
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Twenty-Four
  34. Twenty-Five
  35. May
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. June
  43. Thirty-Two
  44. Thirty-Three
  45. Thirty-Four
  46. Thirty-Five
  47. Thirty-Six
  48. Thirty-Seven
  49. Thirty-Eight
  50. Thirty-Nine
  51. Forty
  52. July
  53. Forty-One
  54. Epilogue
  55. Acknowledgments
  56. Author’s Note
  57. Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
  58. Questions For Discussion
  59. Excerpt

I appreciated her confidence, but she still hadn’t solved the problem of what we should do in the meantime. I searched the room, landing on the television. An idea came to me. “When we were little, when Wallis or I felt lousy, you would pour us a giant bowl of cereal with half-and-half and let us watch soap operas or episodes of ER.”

Cricket looked confused. “That cheered you up?” she asked. “That was me being lazy.”

“That was you being wonderful.” There’d been a day, around sixth grade, when a cool girl had made fun of my saddle pants. In retrospect, she’d been right; those pants (violet, stretchy) had been heinous, but she’d been cruel, and I’d been so down about it. Until, that is, Cricket had introduced me to Dr. Ross.

Cricket gestured toward her refrigerator. “I have some light cream for coffee. Would that work?”

“Yes. Cereal?” She shook her head no. “I’ll go around the corner to the store. I’ll get some beauty supplies, too. She can wallow in a mud mask.”

“When you’re back, you can set up the Netflix.”

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Cricket, you can set it up yourself. You still have the paper with the instructions I wrote for you? Good. I believe in you.”

She puffed up her chest, which made me grin. I didn’t actually expect her to succeed; this was a task that required remote control mastery and an understanding of the difference between HDMI 1 and 2 on the outdated television we’d saved from P. Nevertheless, when I returned with bags of feel-better supplies, she stood in the living room, triumphant, a show already queued. Wallis was curled on the couch under a heavy blanket, chewing her cuticles. I knelt before her and wordlessly lined up my drugstore offerings on the coffee table: nail polish, ice cream, fruity loops, fuzzy socks with rainbows, gummy worms.

“Which one first?” I asked.

Wallis only hesitated a moment. “All,” she said, not even glancing down at the array of selections.

Cricket procured spoons. And for a few hours, we practiced the delicate art of forgetting.

May

May

Twenty-Six

After the night of indulgence with Cricket and Wallis, I turned to a blank page in the back of my day planner and began to formulate a list.

The first bullet point: my job. I needed it back, now more than ever.