The Goodbye Cousins by Maggie Leffler

Author:Maggie Leffler [Leffler, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-553-90661-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was Thursday night, my first evening off. Max and I had only been gone for six days, and yet it already felt like a year. So much had happened, and so much hadn’t happened—specifically, the symptoms from Pottery Barn, which thankfully hadn’t repeated themselves in over three weeks. Still, I hadn’t forgotten, at least not at night, when I’d go to shut my eyes and the panic would invade my chest. My most important prayers rang through my mind to the tune of that Smiths song, “Please Please Please.” Please please please don’t let me be separated from Max, I’d say over and over. In the days of my parents’ divorce, the song was: Please please please, let him come back, before it was, Please please please, let us come back, and then, when my mother got sick, it became, Please please please let her live, which, of course, didn’t happen, either. At this rate, I could sing the line, “Lord knows it would be the first time,” without exaggerating. Unless God counted that moment I found Maddie facedown next to the toilet and thought, Please please please, don’t let her be dead, and it turned out she wasn’t. If each of us only got one prayer to come true, Alecia would’ve declared that I’d wasted it. Ben would’ve told me that prayers were not the same as wishes. Sometimes, though, when you weren’t sure if anyone was listening, it was hard to tell the difference.

I knew Holly would listen, though, so I called and made two doctors’ appointments—one for myself and one for Max. She’d been after me long enough to get my son immunized. And for some reason, I had decided that I could stop worrying about myself if she would simply lay hands on me and pronounce me “fine,” if not “healed.”

Once Augustus and Gusty had left for the hockey game, Max and I went out to the driveway, where Hobbes and TJ were loading up the back of a big pickup truck. Dave leaned against the cab as he surveyed a clipboard.

“Didn’t we have a deal?” I asked.

Dave straightened and took the pencil from his mouth. “Say what?”

I opened my palm to show him the container of Copenhagen. “You left this in the Porsche, and Aug—Mr. Catalano found it. Didn’t you promise me that you wouldn’t chew tobacco in his car?”

“I promised you that I wouldn’t ruin his seats. I don’t remember promising not to dip.” Dave tucked the pencil behind his ear and then hoisted a mammoth Gatorade jug into the back of the truck. “Sorry, though. It must’ve slipped out of my back pocket.”

“Your jeans were tight,” I said. “Nothing was getting out of that back pocket without some help.”

Dave turned, looking startled, while TJ burst out laughing.

“I mean …” My face was heating up.

“There are no accidents,” Hobbes added.

“Hey, assholes, try getting back to work.”

“It’s time to go,” TJ said, tapping his wrist where a watch might have been.

“Well, then, get in the truck,” Dave said.

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