Back when who she was and what she did mattered. Hugging her knees, she tried to pinpoint exactly when she had lost herself—long before losing Mike.

  Chapter 9

  Holly tracked down the puppies to a shady spot beside an empty tin watering tub set inside the fence of an overgrown corral. Four of them cavorted under and around the legs of a sawhorse, tumbling, yipping, and yelping. Their antics distracted her and made her smile, quite an accomplishment on this particular day.

  Holly leaned against the fence railing, soaking up sunshine, inhaling the scent of wild onion that drifted from a patch of greens alongside the barn. A flash of red to her right caught her eye and Holly turned her head to see Maggie strolling toward her.

  "Aunt Sadie sent me to tell you fried chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and beans will be served on the back picnic table in ten minutes. I'm not the least bit hungry after two pieces of cake, but I know from personal experience with Aunt Sadie's fried chicken that I'll indulge until my seams are near to splitting. How 'bout you, sugar? Ready for lunch?"

  "Yeah. Sure." Holly shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have much of an appetite."

  "Still fretting about Justin?"

  Holly rescued one of the puppies who'd scrambled to the top of a nearby hay bale and couldn't get down. "I keep thinking about Grace and Ben. How they made it. It's nice."

  "Very nice," Maggie agreed.

  "I keep coming back to the friendship thing. Sounds like that's when their marriage ran into trouble, when they stopped being friends. What about you and Mike, Maggie? Did you guys stop being friends before you stopped being lovers?"

  Maggie rested her arms along the top fence rail. She stared at the bright red polish on her fingernails as she considered the question. "I guess we did, although if you had asked me a month ago, I would have denied it. Looking back, I realize we developed separate circles of friends. Mike had the people from work, and I had the bowheads."

  "Bowheads?"

  "The PTA moms. For a few years there, hair bows were quite the style for mothers of elementary school students. One of my boys made up the name and it stuck."

  "Must run in the family. Did Lies-a-Lot Lehrman grow up to be a bowhead?"

  "You betcha. PTA president. Wore a different bow every day for a year."

  Holly bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud.

  "How about you? Do you and Justin have different circles of friends?"

  "No. My friends have blended with his into one group." She whipped her head around and turned a wide-eyed gaze on Maggie. "I've lost them, too, haven't I? I didn't even realize. I've been holed up by myself and I haven't called anyone, but no one has called me, either. Why haven't they called? Any of them?"

  She sighed heavily, her spirits sinking. Glumly, she muttered, "I don't have any friends anymore, do I? I might as well move off. No one will miss me."

  "Why, Holly Weeks. If that's not the meanest thing you've ever said to me." Maggie shot to her feet. "What am I? And Grace? Chopped liver?"

  "Oh, that sounded bad. I'm sorry. That's not what I meant." She threw her arm around Maggie's shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "You and Grace are my friends. Dear friends. Funny, isn't it, how fast that has come about."

  "We're like soldiers. We've been through the Battle of the Bathroom together. Such a thing brings females together."

  Holly's lips twitched with the faintest of smiles. "I think I'm very lucky to have you in my life. I don't know how I would have managed these past few weeks without you."

  "That's better. I guess I won't have to beat you up, after all." Maggie returned Holly's hug, then said, "It's come along fast for me, too. My friendships usually begin somewhere other than ladies' rooms, and they develop slowly over lunches and shopping trips. We bonded in the bathroom and never looked back. We skipped right over being casual friends and went straight to being close friends, don't you agree?"

  Holly pursed her lips, her expression turning thoughtful. Then she shook her head. "No, Maggie, I don't agree. From my point of view, we've gone beyond close. I think we're already to the necklace wearing stage."

  "Necklace wearing stage?"

  "I learned this from my students. There is a shop in the mall where my girls buy necklaces for their best friends. The pendants come in different sizes, but are usually hearts. They are broken in two pieces. One half says 'Best' and the other says 'Friends.'"

  "I love it. That's just the sort of thing I missed, having only boys. I adore girl stuff like that. Tell me, do any of them break into threes?"

  "Yes, I believe they do."

  "Then we need necklaces. You, me, and Grace. What do you say?"

  "I think it's a great idea. Although Grace might not agree. Her Best Friend heart pendant is split with Ben."

  Maggie dismissed the notion with a wave. "But he's a guy. Isn't it a girl thing? They don't let guys in on a ritual like this, do they?"

  "Not ordinarily, no. But twelve-and thirteen-year-old girls are at different places than we are when it comes to building friendships. Up until last night, I'd have given the other half of my Best Friend pendant to Justin. Before your trouble with Mike, you'd have given it to him."

  Maggie pursed her lips and pondered. "No, I don't believe I would have. I haven't considered Mike Prescott to be my best friend for years."

  "Really?"

  "Surprises you, doesn't it? Makes you think that's a clear sign of when my marriage started going wrong. Isn't that what greeting card philosophy implies, that your spouse is always supposed to be your best friend? Well, I don't think that's necessarily so. I have a different theory when it comes to combining friends and lovers. It's something I've been thinking about these last few weeks. I think it all goes back to biology."

  Holly's brows arched. "What do you mean?"

  "I think there are times in our lives when friends are more important to us than lovers and vice versa. Think about it. When we're girls the ages of your students, who is more important to us? Not those knucklehead boys we're learning to flirt with. Our best friends are other girls because they can give us what we need at that point in our lives: trust and loyalty and compassion. Intimacy."

  "Don't forget fickleness and cruelty," Holly said with a snort. "Middle-school girls love teaching those lessons."

  "Yes, and those lessons help us later on, don't they? Now, I admit it all starts to change when our biological clock begins running things. Mind you, I'm talking in generalities here. I know not every woman feels that particular tick. However, I think that for the majority of women, when you strip away the veneer of civilization all the way down to the animal, the need to procreate is about as strong an instinct as we have. At that point, advances in medical science aside, we need a man to give us what we want."

  "So it's good-bye girlfriends and hello honey?"

  Maggie shrugged. "Isn't that the way it usually happens? Men are jealous souls and they don't like to share. More often than not, friendships suffer when a lover comes into the picture. But that's okay with us because at that point in our lives, we need our lovers more than we need our friends. So, is it any surprise that lovers become best friends?"

  "Wait a minute." Holly waved away a fly that buzzed around her ankles. "I don't agree. You're making it sound like a friendship between a man and a woman is a second-class friendship. Also, women are just as jealous when it comes to their lover's friends. Need I say anything more than 'poker night'?"

  "You're right. I'm not making myself clear. I'm not saying a lover's friendship is second class, I'm saying it's different. Sex makes it different, and in my opinion, not necessarily more intimate. But it's the friendship a woman needs while she's having her babies and making a home for them. You see, as long as a woman has young children, she is dependent on a man. She needs him for emotional and financial support. She needs him for—"

  "Maggie!" Holly protested. "Have you checked the calendar lately? This is not 1950. Women have come a long way. We can support ourselves, thank you very much. The last statistics I saw said there are more single mothers raising children in America today than married moms. That's reality."

  "That's hard reality, Holly. Very hard reality. Raising my boys was the hardest job I ever had, the toughest one I can imagine. The most rewarding job I will ever have. Through it all, I shared the ups and downs of it with the one person who understood, my children's father. He didn't interfere with the job I was doing, but he supported me in it. Mike was the perfect best friend for me during those years. He cared. He was who I needed."

  Maggie paused and cleared her throat. "I was who he needed, too. Mike was raised by old-fashioned parents in an old-fashioned family in an old-fashioned town. He needed to be the breadwinner. He needed to be the head of the household. Proud, stubborn, arrogant. He needed to be the boss and I let him. That's what he'd been taught. That's what made him Mike Prescott."

  "So what happened?" Holly asked as the clang of a dinner bell drifted toward the corral.

  Maggie pushed off the fence and gestured for Holly to follow her. Their shoes flattened ankle-high green grass as they forged a path toward the back of the house. "The boys grew up, grew independent. The dynamics of our family changed. They stood up to him, challenged him. Competed with him. Learned from him. Turned to him. Some days the testosterone in our house was so thick I worried I'd grow a beard. Mike loved it. I didn't. I felt left out and Mike had new friends. I wished my boys had all been born girls."

  "You didn't really."

  "No, I didn't really." Maggie drew a deep breath, then sighed heavily. "At the same time, I knew this was nature's way, the way God planned it. My kids loved me. Mike loved me. I shouldn't complain, but I did. I complained to Mary Nell Taylor, a woman my age who had her nails done the same time as me. Mary Nell complained to me about the way her mother kept telling her she was raising her kids wrong. We bonded. Grew to be best of friends. We told each other our true weight."

  "Wow. Y'all were good friends."

  Maggie nodded, then increased her pace to intercept Grace, who carried a big bowl of potato salad toward the yellow and white gingham tablecloth spread over the redwood picnic table. "A few months later, Mike and I were at a party and someone asked me who my best friend was," she continued. "She expected me to give the old Hallmark card reply: my dear husband, my best friend. Instead, I told the truth and said Mary Nell Taylor. I'll never forget the scandalized look on that woman's face."

  Holly detoured to the kitchen, then returned with a basket of rolls in one hand, a plate of chicken in the other. Sadie followed carrying the bowl of slaw. Holly picked up her conversation with Maggie where it had left off. "What was Mike's response?"

  "He said he was surprised because he'd expected me to name our next-door neighbor. She and I walked every morning, but we were only social friends. It never occurred to Mike that I would have mentioned him."

  Holly kicked at a clump of Johnsongrass. "Justin used to tell me I was his best friend."

  "It's life stages, sugar. It's not that I loved Mike any less or that he quit loving me. Not then, anyway. Do you understand? It's a normal progression of a relationship. And as much as we love the men in our lives, it's my opinion that except during those years when a woman needs a man for the sake of her children, she'll benefit more from friendships with other women than friendships with men, be they sexual or platonic—if such a thing exists, which is a whole other issue. In general, for women, women make better friends than men."

  "I just don't believe that."

  "I do," Sadie said. "I read in Good Housekeeping that men usually name a woman—their wife, lover, sister—as their best friend. Maybe women are just better at friendship skills of listening, sharing. Men are taught by society to compete, not cooperate."

  "That's a good point," Maggie observed.

  Grace took a seat at the picnic table. "Ben is my soul mate, and I would be lost without him. I do consider him to be my dearest friend. But as much as I adore him and rely on him and confide in him, I need distance from him, too. Especially at this particular time in my life. Some things—my fear, my pain, my grief—I try to filter because when I open up, I double his burden."

  "You shouldn't have to filter," Holly protested. "If the men in our lives love us, truly deeply love us, they should be the ports in our storms."

  "Think it through, honey. Cancer is not my storm alone. Cancer is a storm for my family, and Ben is just as swept up in it as me. I am his port. I want to be his port. I want to shelter him and our children as best I can because I love them."

  Maggie eyed Grace across a chicken leg. "But you still need someone to talk with when you're feeling low, right?"

  "That's right. I'm not good in a support group. I need support, but I don't have it to offer in return because I use mine up dealing with my family. That's where a close woman friend or two," she added with a smile, "comes in. I need a girlfriend who will listen to my deepest fears and emotions and still have the objectivity to help me decide which icing to choose for my wedding anniversary cake."

  "But why does this friend need to be a girlfriend?" Holly passed the potato salad to Sadie. "Why does gender enter into the question at all? I mean, I understand needing a friend in addition to a spouse. I understand the need to shelter your loved ones from pain. Plus, everybody needs somebody to complain to when a spouse does something stupid. But does that somebody necessarily need to be female? Guys can be just as supportive as girls, just as sensitive."

  Maggie and Grace and even Sadie shot her skeptical looks.

  "They can." Holly squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "Justin could. He is. The man took me to the Pink Sisterhood wedding gown sale in memory of my mother. What could be more sensitive than that?"

  Maggie licked her lips, then wiped them with her napkin. "Considering what happened, an argument could be made that it was a terribly insensitive act."

  "She has a point, Maggie," Grace said. "Maybe it's something generational. Maybe people in her age group can be best friends with members of the opposite sex. What do you think, Sadie?"

  "Maybe, but I've never seen it."

  Maggie shot Holly a significant look. "You see, Holly, when it comes to friendship between men and women, sooner or later, sex gets in the way. I saw it in the movies. Cute show, remember? Billy Crystal says it to Meg Ryan."

  Holly rolled her eyes, then stirred lemon into her tea. She waved her spoon in the air, punctuating her words as she declared, "That's not always true. I've had a number of guy friends I've never had sex with."

  "But you have had guy friends whom you did have sex with, right? That's what proves my case. I've never had sex with my girlfriends."

  "How reassuring," Grace said dryly.

  Maggie laughed and used her spoon to swipe a glob of potato salad off Holly's plate. She popped it into her mouth, shut her eyes, and moaned with delight. "Sinful, Sadie. Simply sinful."

  She licked the last vestiges of potato salad from the spoon. "Speaking of which, there was this gal who made a pass at me at a party once, although I didn't recognize that's what she was doing at the time. Mike had to explain it to me later." She paused, thinking back. A grin touched her lips. "He didn't know whether to be appalled or aroused."

  "Puh-lease." A grin flitted at the edges of Holly's lips as she finished her chicken.

  "Look at that smile," Grace observed. "That's what I like to see. Holly dear, you've been altogether too gloomy today."

  "I agree." Maggie reached across the table and took Holly's hand. "Listen, sugar. As much as it pains me to admit it, I don't have all the answers. You may be right about the man/woman/friends thing. Maybe if I'd been a better friend to Mike he wouldn't have replaced me with a depth chart and a dinghy. Then again, maybe it was inevitable. I don't know. About the only thing I am certain of right now is that I'm awfully grateful that you and Grace have come into my life. If not for y'all, I'd probably be home in bed right now wallowing in self-pity, and that would be a crying shame. It's a beautiful day and there are puppies in the yard and another leg of Aunt Sadie's fried chicken on the plate for the savoring. It makes me happy inside. Happy. I haven't felt happy in months and months. Y'all have done that for me."

  A wave of emotion rose inside Holly. She felt the pressure of tears build behind her eyes. Blinking rapidly, a tremulous smile hovering on her lips, she shrugged and said, "What are friends for?"

  Then she leaned across the table, pressed a kiss against Maggie's cheek, and added, "Thank you."

  Maggie flashed a grin, then quickly schooled it into a scowl. "Oh, spit. Was that a pass?"

  "No, Maggie." Holly made a show of sighing and rolling her eyes. "I didn't use my tongue."

  "All right," Grace said. "That's enough. Y'all are making Sadie and me uncomfortable."

  "I'm not uncomfortable," Aunt Sadie piped up. "I've learned a lot about lesbians since I got Internet access here at the farm. Why, have you seen those pictures where—"

  Maggie's chin dropped. "Aunt Sadie!"

  She chuckled and eyed Grace and Holly. "Girl always has been gullible."

  Maggie wrinkled her nose at her husband's aunt, then turned to Grace and changed the subject. "Did you decide on the cake?"

  "Yes. I've never tasted a more delicious cake in my life."

  "Me either. I've been to a dozen weddings in the past year and tasted cakes called things like White Chocolate Champagne, and Turtle Fudge, and Kahlua Creme. Not a one of them melted in your mouth like Aunt Sadie's."

  Holly asked, "What icing did you choose?"

  Grace and Sadie shared a look. "That's still up in the air."

  "If it were me, I'd choose the vanilla," Holly said. "That's the best vanilla icing I've ever tasted and I think it is the perfect complement to the flavor of the cake."

  Maggie tugged a pencil and paper scrap from her pocket and made a note. Her tone casual, she asked, "What type of decoration do you prefer, Holly? Sugar flowers? Fresh flowers? A traditional bride and groom topper?"