Mary nodded and after a moment, Sarah agreed. Luckily Jake had refilled the flask. The second swallow didn’t taste nearly as nasty as the first. It didn’t burn this time, either. Instead it enhanced the warm glow spreading through her system.

“How do you feel?”

“Better,” Sarah said, giving Mary the flask.

Mary didn’t need encouragement. She took her turn with the flask, then growled like a grizzly bear.

Sarah didn’t know why she found that so amusing, but she did. She laughed uproariously. In fact, she laughed until she started to cough.

“What?” Mary asked, grinning broadly.

“Oh, dear.” She coughed again. “I didn’t know you did animal impressions.”

“I do when I drink Scotch.”

Then, as if they’d both become aware that they were having an actual conversation, they pulled back into themselves. Sarah noticed that Mary’s expression suddenly grew dignified, as though she’d realized she was laughing and joking with her enemy.

“We should get moving, don’t you think?” Mary said in a dispassionate voice.

“You’re right.” Sarah put the flask back in the golf bag and wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck and face. Fortified in all respects, she was ready to face the storm. “It’s a good thing we’re walking together. Anything could happen on a day like this.”

They’d gone about the length of a football field when Mary said, “I’m cold again.”

“I am, too.”

“You should’ve brought along the Scotch.”

“We’ll have to go back for it.”

“I think we should,” Mary agreed solemnly. “We could freeze to death before we reach the club.”

“Yes. The Scotch might make the difference between survival and death.”

Back at the car, they climbed in and shared the flask again. Soon, for no apparent reason, they were giggling.

“I think we’re drunk,” Mary said.

“Oh, hardly. I can hold my liquor better than this.”

Mary burst into peals of laughter. “No, you can’t. Don’t you remember the night of our Halloween party?”

“That was—what?—twenty-two years ago!”

“I know, but I haven’t forgotten how silly those margaritas made you.”

“You were the one who kept filling my glass.”

“You were the one who kept telling me how good they were.”

Sarah nearly doubled over with hysterics. “Next thing I knew, I was standing on the coffee table singing ‘Guantanamera’ at the top of my lungs.”

“You sounded fabulous, too. And then when you started to dance—”

“I what?” All Sarah recalled was the blinding headache she’d suffered the next morning. When she woke and could barely lift her head from the pillow without stabbing pain, she’d phoned her dearest, best friend in the world. Mary had dropped everything and rushed over. She’d mixed Sarah a tomato-juice concoction that had saved her life, or so she’d felt at the time.