Kindred Spirits Read Online Free Page A

the idea of outsiders weighing in on our business. He insisted we should work it out ourselves, privately.”
    Scott remained silent. Carol stubbed out her cigarette, remembering how she’d been so helpless and alone.
    “The last thing I needed was to be harassed by some overly earnest parent demanding another food ban. We were already fed up with eliminating peanut butter and vending machine candy and soda, anything with nuts. It was getting to the point of ridiculous.
    “Anyway, this mother, Michelle Richardson, stood up at the meeting and started lashing out about how irresponsible the board was for condoning. . .” She paused because it seemed so silly. “Bake sales.”
    Scott grinned. “Bake sales?”
    “You know, the usual standard fund-raising fare—chocolatechip cookies, brownies, cupcakes. The bread and butter, not to pun, of the PTA. I guess she wanted them to raise money by selling carrot sticks or apples instead of food loaded with empty calories, I don’t know. Anyway, I lost it and burst out laughing. Then Michelle called me ignorant and said she had half a mind to file a lawsuit. So, I shot back a few choice epithets. Not my finest hour.”
    “What did you say?”
    Let’s see. What had she said, exactly? Carol leaned against her hand, remembering the look of shock on Michelle Richardson’s face. “Entitled soccer mom. Trustfundarian. Something about suggesting she get a real job instead of bothering the board with hysterical causes that were totally pointless. You get the gist.”
    Looking back, what Carol saw was a crazed woman under pressure, her complexion splotchy from lack of sleep, eyes red from exhaustion. And that woman wasn’t Michelle Richardson, it was her, Carol Goodworthy, hitting rock bottom.
    She’d conned herself into believing she’d fooled everyone with her expensive suits and cool composure. Surely, no one knew that the dynamo who chaired the school board and commuted to New York to work as a high-powered attorney while still managing to deadhead her champion Barbara Bush roses and bake a mean strawberry pie was an absolute wreck. Carol took pride in being so disciplined that no one suspected that she hadn’t slept with her husband for months, that she would spring wide awake at two a.m. only to ramble around her big house like some sort of vampire yearning for rest. Much, much needed rest.
    If she’d been able to rest, if she and Jeff had been able to sit down and talk about what was going wrong in their marriage, the façade wouldn’t have crumbled. She wouldn’t have taken out her frustration on a well-meaning mother of five.
    And now, because of Lynne’s funeral, Carol was forced to go home and face Michelle, face all of them. What must they think of her? She rubbed the ache that had now blossomed into sharp, stabbing pain. What must they call her behind her back?
    There was a chuckle and Carol snapped out of her reverie to find Scott at the sink washing out the ashtray. “What?”
    “Bake sales.” He shook water out of the dish and turned it upside down. “A life thrown into chaos over cupcakes. I’m sorry, Carol, but talk about pointless. Leaving your twenty-year marriage over a fight about something so inane— that’s pointless.”
    “It might seem so now, but it wasn’t then. When I got home that night, Jeff was pissed. He said I’d gone too far and that working at the firm had turned me into a cold, hard bitch who constantly crossexamined him, our children, even innocent neighbors like Michelle. Made me impossible to love, he said.” She bit her lower lip, willing herself not to slip into the velvet trap of self-pity, a hole she’d visited far too often. “There was no one on my side, Scott. No one.”
    Except for her friends, she thought, correcting herself. After their fight, she went straight to Mary Kay’s house, where an emergency meeting was called. Beth sat on one side of her, Lynne on the other, while Mary Kay mixed her potent ginger