Wish You Were Here Read Online Free Page A

squirmed in her seat. “I feel as if there’s no coating on my nerve endings.” She settled in her chair. “You’re right about Maude. She’s got a lot going for her. There ought to be someone out there for her. Someone who would appreciate her—and her business success too.”
    Susan’s eyes danced. “Maybe she’s got a lover.”
    â€œNo way. You can’t burp in your kitchen but what everyone knows it. No way.” Harry shook her head.
    â€œI wonder.” Susan poured herself more Tab. “Remember Terrance Newton? We all thought we knew Terrance.”
    Harry thought about that. “Well, we were teenagers. I mean, if we had been adults, maybe we’d have picked up on something. The vibes.”
    â€œAn insurance executive we all know goes home, shoots his wife and himself. My recollection is the adults were shocked. No one picked up on anything. If you can keep up your facade, people accept that. Very few people look beneath the surface.”
    Harry sighed. “Maybe everyone’s too busy.”
    â€œOr too self-centered.” Susan drummed the table with her fingers. “What I’m getting at is that maybe we don’t know one another as well as we think we do. It’s a small-town illusion—thinking we know each other.”
    Harry quietly played with her sub. “You know me. I think I know you.”
    â€œThat’s different. We’re best friends.” Susan polished off her sandwich and grabbed her brownie. “Imagine being Stafford Sanburne and not being invited to your sister’s wedding.”
    â€œThat was a leap.”
    â€œLike I said, we’re best friends. I don’t have to think in sequence around you.” Susan laughed.
    â€œStafford sent Fair a postcard. ‘Hang in there, buddy.’ Come to think of it, that’s what Kelly said to me. Hey, you missed it. Kelly Craycroft and Bob Berryman had a fight, fists and all.”
    â€œYou wait until now to tell me!”
    â€œSo much else has been going on, it slipped my mind. Kelly said it was about a paving bill. Bob thinks he overcharged him.”
    â€œBob Berryman may not be Mr. Charm but that doesn’t sound like him, to fight over a bill.”
    â€œHey, like I said, maybe we don’t really know one another.”
    Harry picked tomatoes out of her sandwich. They were the culprits; she was sure the meat, cheese, and pickles would stay inside without those slimy tomatoes. She slapped the bread back together as Mrs. Murphy reached across the plate to hook a piece of roast beef. “Mrs. Murphy, that will do.” Harry used her commanding mother voice. It would work at the Pentagon. Mrs. Murphy withdrew her paw.
    â€œMaybe we should rejoice that Little Marilyn’s made a match at last,” Susan said.
    â€œYou don’t think that Little Marilyn bagged Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton by herself, do you?”
    Susan considered this. “She’s got her mother’s beauty.”
    â€œAnd is cold as a wedge.”
    â€œNo, she isn’t. She’s quiet and shy.”
    â€œSusan, you’ve liked her since we were kids and I never could stand Little Marilyn. She’s such a momma’s baby.”
    â€œYou drove your mother wild.”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œOh, yeah, how about the time you put your lace underpants over her license plate and she drove around the whole day not knowing why everyone was honking at her and laughing.”
    â€œThat.” Harry remembered. She missed her mother terribly. Grace Minor had died unexpectedly of a heart attack four years earlier, and Cliff, her husband, followed within the year. He couldn’t make a go of it without Grace and he admitted as much on his deathbed. They were not rich people by any means but they left Harry a lovely clapboard house two miles west of town at the foot of Little Yellow Mountain and they also left a small trust fund, which paid