Midnight Voices Read Online Free Page A

with it. I just can’t deal with any more.
But even as the thoughts formed in her mind, she rejected them.
I’ll get through,
she decided.
Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.
Steeling herself, she picked up the receiver once again. “Hello?”
    “Caroline?”
    She instantly relaxed as she recognized Andrea Costanza’s voice at the other end. Caroline had known Andrea since they’d met at Hunter College almost fifteen years before, and even though Andrea hadn’t approved when Caroline had dropped out to marry Brad Evans, they’d stayed friends, and become even closer in the last five years, after Andrea had taken an apartment only two blocks from her own. “Thank God,” she breathed now. “You have no idea how much I need to hear a friendly voice.”
    “Well, how about three friendly voices, for lunch on Tuesday?”
    “Three?”
    “I just got a call from Bev. She and Rochelle are worried about you.”
    Beverly Amondson and Rochelle Newman were the other two women Caroline considered her best friends—or at least she had until recently, when it seemed like she hardly heard from them anymore. “They’re scared,” Andrea had explained a month ago. “You’re single now. That makes you a threat.” She’d laughed at the look of shock on Caroline’s face. “Oh, grow up, Caroline! Why do you think I was never invited when Rochelle threw one of her cozy little dinner parties? They were couple deals, and I’m not part of a couple. Now you aren’t either. End of invitations.”
    “But that doesn’t make any sense! Why would I be a threat?”
    “All single women are a threat to all married women,” Andrea pronounced. “You were the only exception—you never worried about me at all. And don’t get me wrong. I love Bev and Rochelle. But haven’t you noticed they never invite single women to anything if their husbands are there? I’m fine for lunch and girl talk, but that’s it. And now you’re part of that group. You watch.”
    Andrea, it turned out, had been right: Within a few weeks after Brad died, the invitations from the Amondsons and the Newmans had begun to taper off.
    “Well, you can tell them I’m alive, if not exactly kicking,” Caroline said now, and immediately wished she’d managed to sound a little more cheerful, no matter how she felt.
    “Then this should make you feel better. Bev says we should all meet at Cipriani’s.”
    Caroline burst out laughing. “
Harry
Cipriani’s?” she repeated. “In the Sherry Netherland? You must be crazy—you could never afford it, and I sure can’t anymore!”
    “Ah, but Bev and Rochelle can,” Andrea replied. “And they might live in their own little world of money, but they know we don’t. They’re footing the bill!”
    “So I’m not only off the dinner list, but now I’m on the charity list?” Caroline asked, regretting the words the instant she uttered them. “Oh, God, Andrea. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
    “Who cares? It’s true—at Cipriani’s, we’re both charity cases. So what do you say? You sure sound like you could use a good lunch, and by ‘good’ I mean ‘expensive.’ Get away from your problems and let your hair down for a couple of hours.”
    Caroline hesitated, but not for long; suddenly the idea of sitting in the sumptuous room with her three best friends was irresistible. “I’ll be there,” she promised. “Hey, I’m taking the kids to the park this morning. Want to meet us there?”
    “God, how I wish I could,” Andrea sighed. “But I’ve got three kids in shelters that need foster homes, and four families to do background checks on before I can even think about matching the kids to the families.”
    “Why do I suspect the city isn’t paying you to work on weekends?” Caroline asked.
    Andrea uttered a darkly hollow chuckle. “Because you’re a reasonably intelligent human being. But the kids still need homes, so hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go. And if I don’t