Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [20]
Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was beginning to suspect that she was permitting herself to mourn this long separation only now that it was over.
Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
—Elizabeth Bowen
Bridget pictured them as the three ants trapped in an amber bead of a necklace Tibby’s great-grandma Felicia had worn. It was odd the things that stuck with you. Bridget couldn’t remember most of her birthdays, her mother’s last day, her father’s current address, her college graduation, but how frequently she thought of those three damned insects stuck in a necklace belonging to Tibby’s ancient ancestor who happened to have been bananas.
It was dark. It was dinnertime and Tibby still hadn’t turned up. They didn’t want to eat anything or do anything or even say anything until Tibby got there. The three of them sat paralyzed in the living room. Bridget had the eerie sensation that their state of suspension was the culmination of nearly two years spent like that.
There were four of them. There were always four of them. It seemed, as it had always seemed, disloyal to allow any aspect of their friendship to progress without all of them present. No way could they start their magical week before Tibby appeared.
Lena was looking agitated. “Could she have gotten lost? The roads are really treacherous. I hope she wasn’t driving.”
“Lenny, she’s twenty-nine years old. She can handle herself. She’s the second-best driver of us, and even if she did get into some mishap it couldn’t be serious.”
Lena was nodding.
“She’s dependable with the seat belt, and you can barely go ten miles an hour on these roads.”
Lena, still nodding, wandered back to the kitchen to check again that there was a dial tone on the phone. It was a quirk of her father’s that he left the phone on in an empty house. Indeed, there was a dial tone, just as there had been a dial tone half an hour before. “She might not have this number,” Lena murmured.
“Probably not,” Carmen said from her stiff perch on the couch. Bridget could read Carmen’s anxiety by the way her collarbones stuck out.
Bridget cocked an ear. “Len, do not call her again. When she sees the number of times you called, she’s going to think you are psychotic.”
“I’m not. I mean I wasn’t,” Lena said, floating back to the living room. “I was just checking.”
Carmen picked at her fingernails. “Judging from the stuff in the kitchen, it seems like she made plans for dinner. Whatever happened, she’s going to figure out a way to get back here in time for dinner, right?”
By nine o’clock the wind had come up, and the mystery was turning rancid.
“They eat dinner really late here,” Carmen noted.
“Maybe she ran off with a handsome Greek.” Bridget was trying to be funny, but not even she found herself to be.
Between nine and ten, they barely moved. Bridget got up twice, once to look out the window into darkness and once to open the door. She looked up and down the windy, empty street, hoping this would be the moment that Tibby would come around the bend.
“I wish there was someone we could call,” Lena said.
“Do you think her parents might know anything?” Carmen asked.
Lena shook her head. “Anyway, it’s around four in the morning there.”
“What about Brian?” Bridget asked.
Carmen looked up. “Do you have a number for him?”
Bridget shook her head, as did Lena. They only had Tibby’s cellphone number, no landline in Australia where they might find him. “I wonder where he is?”
“Australia, I assume. He’s not here.”
Lena looked thoughtful. “What do we even know about them anymore? Do we know they’re together? I know they moved to Australia together, but do we know for sure what’s happened since? She hasn’t mentioned him in a long time.”
Bridget shrugged. Her legs were aching from holding