The Drummond Girls by Mardi Jo Link

Author:Mardi Jo Link
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

The first thing you saw when you pulled into the dirt driveway of Fairview was the rough-hewn wood of the cabin’s side porch. When we returned, lights from the sliding glass door shone onto the log railing, so we knew at least some of the girls were still awake. I wondered if one of them was Linda. I was not looking forward to confronting her; she could be formidable. Drummond was supposed to be a time to support each other and have fun, not bail on each other over a guy.

The whole way back, the three of us had been like a highlight reel, reliving the best moments of the previous hours, and we hadn’t discussed what we were going to say to Linda. When we finally pulled into the dirt driveway of Fairview, I was about to suggest we stay in the car and talk about it together, when Andrea got out, jogged up onto the porch, opened the door, and disappeared inside the cabin.

A second later, Jill and I heard her loud and unmistakable voice: “What the hell, Linda?” It was the same tone she’d used on me when she thought I’d brought one of my kids to her bachelorette party. Irritated, yet also curious.

Jill had been the brave one in the face of a physical altercation, and it looked like Andrea was willing to tackle an emotional one. What had I been doing during both of these? Thinking about things. What a rebel.

But Jill and I went inside then, too, and just like the three of us had talked all at once in the Bronco, the girls who’d been with Linda talked all at once when we walked inside. Where had we been? Did we get lost? What was going on?

Not one of those questions sounded angry; when I thought about it, not even Andrea’s question to Linda had. She’d sounded genuinely perplexed, as if the nighttime ride the three of us had just endured was a mystery to be solved and not an offense to be atoned for.

Later, Andrea would become our group’s conscience, our conflict resolver, and her actions that night just the beginning, and showed exactly why she was so good at defusing a conflict. Andrea was fascinated by people, by their motivations, and especially by the why of human behavior, making her capable of doing something impossible for the rest of us: keeping her own feelings out and just assessing the situation.

That moment inside Fairview was a harbinger of things to come, when Andrea our friend would develop a reputation as Andrea the Confronter. She was good at it. Fair, compassionate, and willing to get right to the point. She was down-to-earth, too, so that night all her communication skills had come out as simply “What the hell, Linda?”

“What the hell, what?” Linda asked.

“Why the hell did you tell that guy we’d give him a ride?”

“What?” Linda said, sounding genuinely confused. “I never told him that.”

“For real?” Andrea asked.

“Yes, for real. Why the hell would I tell him that? I was trying to get the hell away from him.

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