“Where is your sense of adventure?” Frances asked. “We’re only seventy.”
“I’m seventy-three, Fran. That makes you seventy-four, and Irene here—”
“Old, we get it,” Irene said.
“Okay,” Frances conceded. “But is this really the way you want to live the next thirty years? On a farm with no company but your mother?”
“Yes!” Joan said. “I am perfectly happy. I have my place, my art—”
“Your mother,” Irene interjected.
Joan groaned. “But she is mymother.She has to be with someone.”
“I don’t know. Looked like she was taking pretty good care of herself to me,” Frances said.
“Really? Because she was two seconds from shooting your face off,” Joan responded. “And I haven’t even told you that I’m deaf in one ear. I’m no good to any job now.” She turned her head so they could see the tiny aid in her ear. “Lab experiment gone wrong.”
“Hearing loss is not a season-ending injury,” Frances argued. “A season-ending injury would be like losing a leg. Or your mind.”
“And you’re wearing martial arts clothes. With a black belt,” Irene pointed out.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t still kick ass.” Joan pressed her lips together. She glanced over her shoulder again, as if she thought her mother would burst through the wall, Kool-Aid Man–style, any moment. “What’s the heist, anyway?”
Irene sighed. “Typical Frances—drags us into this but doesn’t have anything set up.”
“Hey,” Frances said, a bit miffed. “I told you, I wanted to see if anyone was interested before I picked a mark.”
“You just proved my theory that some things never change,” Joan said, eyeing Frances warily.
Frances was trying very hard not to be offended, but they weren’t wrong. She wasn’t as clever as they were. She could come up with the idea, but they’d always seemed better at execution. At least she’d done this—no one else had tried to get the gang back together. “Apologies for not being as smart as you two. But I’ve had some pretty good ideas in years past, and honestly, what is the point of coming up with something if no one is going to help me? Come on, Joan. Aren’t you even a tiny bit interested?”
“Not really,” Joan said. She got up from the floor and went to a bookcase. She lifted the lid of a red-and-blue ceramic bowl and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette, then returned to where they were seated and resumed her seat on the floor. She lit the joint, dragged on it, then handed it to Irene, who took it without hesitation.
“First of all, I have questions,” Joan said. “What about Edie?”
“We haven’t decided,” Irene said, and passed the joint to Frances.
It had been decades since she’d smoked marijuana. She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be high. She had a fleeting thought that perhaps she ought not to smoke it with the number of painkillers in her. But she put it to her lips and inhaled.
“Edie turned on us. She tried to get us arrested,” Joan reminded them.
“Because of her boyfriend,” Frances said.
“He was our mark,” Irene said. “And she married him.”
No one said anything for a moment. They just passed the joint around like they were in their twenties, sitting on the backseawall of Frances’s Hamptons house. “I miss her,” Frances said finally. “I miss her a lot.”
“I do, too,” Irene admitted.
Frances and Joan looked at her with surprise.
Irene shrugged. “I really liked Edie,” she said with a shrug. “Loved her, like I loved you two. I just wish she hadn’t been such an asshole in the end.”
“Didn’t we all?” Frances said. “We had a good thing going.”
Joan shrugged. “We couldn’t keep doing that forever. But I don’t trust Edie Smith. Frankly, I’m not sure I trust the two of you.”
Frances had known it was a strong possibility there would be a reluctance to get back together. Much less pull off a heist. Still, she was terribly disappointed. If Joan was out, would Irene stick with her? Probably not. Frances had never distinguished herself as the must-have team member. Would it even make sense to go to Edie without Joan?
