Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Read Online Free Page B

to worry about than marriages with ugly endings.
    “This morning’s events will bring those documents into effect.”
    I had let my mind start wandering, but those last words of hers brought me right back. “Oh my God.” I sat up straight and looked at her. “Jeannie, you’re Molly’s attorney?” I unfastened my seat belt and reached for the door handle. “Oh, no you don’t. I can’t go over there. Stop the van. Let me out right here. Jeannie, I mean it. I’ll walk back to River Bend.”
    “Shut up and get your hand off that door handle.” She shifted her bulk sideways so that she could face me as she drove. We were crossing the Seventh Avenue Bridge, and I looked nervously out the windshield. I wished she’d watch the road. Her van had electric windows, and I considered rolling mine down just in case— so I could swim out when the van went into the river.
    “Molly Pontus asked me to handle her divorce because she had seen an article about you and me in the paper after you inherited your dad’s business. She told me she figured if you thought I was a good lawyer, then that was recommendation enough for her.”
    “Geez, Jeannie, would you watch the road? Okay, already.”
    Her words surprised me. I had watched Molly from afar, reading everything about her I could find. It had never occurred to me she might be doing the same with me.
    “Molly also told me about this feud between the two of you—that you used to be best friends before both of you’all’s pride got in the way. Seychelle, this gal’s gonna need friends in the next few days. You need to get over it.”
    “Ha! Just like that. You think it’s that easy, Jeannie? When two people haven’t talked in over thirteen years? She’s the one who walked away from me.”
    “You better make it that easy. She had her reasons back then. Besides, all these years, your hand’s been broke? You could’ve picked up the phone and called her, you know.”
    “Like hell.”
    “You do know she’s got a son.” Jeannie chuckled. “Kid’s name is Zale.”
    “Yeah, I know,” I said, deliberately not joining in her laughter. “Only Molly would saddle a kid with a name like that.”
    Jeannie looked at me again, not just a driver’s glance, but a long stare.
    “Would you keep your eyes on the road, dammit?”  
    “For a person with brothers named Pitcairn and Madagascar” she said, “you’ve got lots of nerve talking about weird names.”
    “So my parents had a thing about islands. Look, I know what it’s like to go through life with an odd name. Poor kid.” I turned from Jeannie and stared out the window again. “Molly always was the artsy type. Zale,” I said, exhaling so sharply that my breath made a faint fog on the van’s window.
    She turned on Davie Boulevard and headed for the bridge.
    I thought about that morning, going through the bridge towing Nick’s body on the Mykonos , and I remembered the first time I met him. Molly and I had skipped school that day at Stranahan High. She had an old Volkswagen convertible, her first car, and we’d put the top down and headed to A1A to cruise the beach. Nick Pontus had driven his Tropi-Subs & Gyros delivery van to Fort Lauderdale Beach that same afternoon, and we parked next to each other north of Sunrise Boulevard. He looked so mature, so unlike the teenage boys we knew, with his thick, brown, wavy hair, black T-shirt, and sockless canvas shoes, leaning against the side of the van smoking a cigarette, staring at the ocean through squinted eyes. He was so different, so exotic, still with the trace of a Greek accent, though he had come to this country ten years before. We struck up a conversation, and when he spoke my name he put the accent on the first syllable instead of the second, and I thought it sounded sexy and exciting. I felt something stir in me that I’d never felt with the boys at school, but when we said our good-byes that afternoon, it was Molly’s number he asked for.
    Jeannie