Drives Like a Dream Read Online Free Page B

from the table.
"Does anyone else have the jitters?" He held out his shaky hand.
    "Should we?" Davy asked.
    Cy smiled, but did not respond.
    Soon, Ivan and Davy were browsing in a nearby record store while Jessica stood before a mirror in the fitting room at Jacobson's, a place she hadn't been since her senior year in high school when her mother had dragged her to try on prom dresses. She had allowed Lydia to buy her a puffy, iridescent blue taffeta number. Her boyfriend at the time—a junk collector and bad boy—had looked stunned, and not in a good way, when he'd arrived to pick her up. Jessica didn't try to explain. Even she couldn't understand why her mother, so thrifty and practical in her own life, would have the random compulsion to turn her daughter into a princess.
    Now she walked out of the fitting room in a pale green suit and beige shoes that her father had picked out for her, a getup that would have looked a lot better on a middle-aged junior executive. But not wanting to make a fuss, she said, "I love it."
    Cy stepped back to admire the suit. "Me too. It's very retro."
    "Haven't heard you use that word before, Dad."
    "I try to keep up."
    They bought the suit and collected Ivan and Davy, then drove to the nearby subdivision where the soon-to-be Spivey-Modines had been living for the past year. Cy and Ivan had some last minute details to deal with before their limo arrived. Cy asked Jessica and Davy if they'd take his car and pick up Ellen's parents, Casper and M.J., and deliver them to the wedding. "They could make it there themselves, but Casper's not the best driver," he explained. "I don't know what we'd do if they got into an accident today."
    "What do you mean?" Jessica asked.
    "Casper failed the vision test last time he tried to renew his license. But he's still on the road."
    "So, why doesn't M.J. drive?"
    "She gives him a hard time about it, believe me. Part of her is probably waiting to say, 'I told you so,' and another part must realize how hard it is for a Michigan driver to give up the wheel."
    Jessica thought, That's an "I told you so" with some potentially awful consequences. She had met the Spiveys the night before. Casper had glasses that made his eyes look like beetles frozen in ice, but he seemed to get around fine and was almost graceful on his feet.
    "And he hasn't been pulled over yet?" Ivan asked.
    "Not as far as I know." Cy parked in front of a pearl-gray condo that looked like all the others on the block, save the wooden placard of a butterfly on the front door. "Anyway, it's Ellen's day. I want to make sure there are no unwelcome surprises."
    Before carrying out their assignment, Jessica and Davy stopped by the house on Franklin so she could change into her new clothes. In the kitchen, she found a note her mother had left: "Back when I am." Whatever that meant. Jessica had begun to lose patience earlier that morning when Lydia had fished for details about the rehearsal dinner. She was relieved that her mother had left the house.
    Jessica went upstairs and slipped back into the suit. The color looked even worse in her sunny room than it had under the fluorescent lights of the department store. It was more of a mint than a sage green. With a bob cut and a shellacking of Aqua Net she could have passed for Lady Bird Johnson, circa 1965. She pulled back her hair in a barrette and went looking in her mother's bathroom for some makeup. To her surprise, a tube of lipstick sat on the sink. Maybe Lydia had taken it out and forgotten to give it to her. It was a bit orange for the green suit, but better than nothing. As Jessica leaned into the mirror to put on the lipstick she tried to remember her mother's face from this morning. Had Lydia actually been wearing lipstick?
    People often told her how alike she and her mother were. Both were tall and dark-haired, and they shared a strong-mindedness that sometimes put strangers on edge. As a girl she had loved hearing that she was her mother's