The Canterbury Sisters Read Online Free

name of an art professor who escorts both groups and individuals through southern England. She looks like just what I need—pale, serious, academic, disinclined to asking personal questions. I send her a quick email, telling her I need to walk the Canterbury Trail ASAP, top to bottom, from London to the steps of the Cathedral. And then I google how to transport ashes on an international flight.
    Evidently the dead are a sizable segment of the travel industry, because the answer pops right up. The urn must be carried onto the plane, not packed in a suitcase. It must be scanned and taken through security and I will need a note from the crematorium confirming that the contents are human remains and not something like plutonium. I must be prepared for the fact that security can open the urn at any time if they wish, that small bits of my mother might fly out onto the airport carpet or dirty the hands of a TSA agent. Or perhaps I might choose to eschew the urn altogether, the site suggests, with a gentle but pointed hint. Transfer the ashes to something less heavy and likely to trigger the scanning machine. Like, for example, a ziplock bag.
    I always meant to take my mother to Europe, but my travel was so often for business or I was meeting Ned in some romantic place. And of course she was busy too, fostering misunderstood pit bulls, walking for Amnesty International, framing houses with Habitat . . . Then she got sick. We let all our chances pass, Diana and I, and now at last she’s coming with me, but she’s coming in my carry-on bag. I put the wine down, thinking that it’s bitter, but I know I’m being unfair. I’ve been drinking while thinking of something else, which is the cardinal sin of wine tasting, for everyone knows how easily emotions can trickle from the mind to the tongue. Has the wine gone bitter, or have I?
    The sun is up. I rise and leave my desk, the juice glass still in my hand. I pour the remains of the Syrah into the kitchen sink and look down at the dark-red stain. In my email I told the professor that I could be in London as early as Sunday and I would like a private tour. It probably costs a fortune to hire a personal guide, but all I can think is that I need to be gone, long gone, before Ned calls to apologize and explain again about how he just couldn’t help himself, how no man can resist a woman in need. The desire to escape feels huge within me. In fact, if I don’t get out of here right now, I’m not sure what will happen.
    I pick up my phone and try again. “Siri,” I say. “What’s the meaning of life?”
    A pause and then the answer: I Kant answer that. Ha ha.
    Ha ha. She’s quite the hoot, that Siri.

Two
    T hey did a study once on why so many people cry in airplanes—whether it’s the silence, the isolation, or perhaps just some primordial fear of leaving terra firma.
    I think it’s because airplanes are the closest most of us come to enforced meditation. On the runway, in that small, trembling world between here and there, we have nothing to do but sit with our thoughts. Of course, once the plane is airborne, there are a thousand things to preoccupy us—movies, Kindles, games, puzzles, drinks, that slim but seductive possibility that our seatmate could turn out to be our soul mate. But during takeoff and landing, we’re on our own. We cannot avoid the vast lonely prairies that exist inside our own heads.
    At first, it seems luck is with me on the flight. No one is sitting in the aisle seat, so I’m able to stretch out and sleep. We land early; so early, in fact, that Heathrow doesn’t have an empty gate ready for us. While we wait for an opening, I pull out my phone and check my messages. Most of them are predictable—work and ads and notifications from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But one of them is from the college professor I’ve hired as my guide, and the subject line reads Slight change of plans.
    Slight change of plans? That’s not good. In my experience,