“Hey!” Frances said. She’d taken a seat on the hay bale as if she meant to stay awhile.
Marcy, meanwhile, looked crushed by Edie’s admonishment. “I just thought—”
“I know what you thought, but this isn’t the time,” Edie said, trying, unsuccessfully, to take the edge out of her voice. “I’ll tell you more later. I swear it, sweetie. Please, just go.”
Marcy pressed her lips together. She looked at them all, then slowly, reluctantly, turned and walked out of the gazebo.
Edie followed her to the entrance, watched her walk down the path, and when she couldn’t see her anymore, she turned back to her friends.
“It’s not her fault,” Frances said.
“Look what you’ve done!” Edie said, gesturing wildly in the direction her granddaughter had gone. “You’ve come here and messed up my life without warning,andhers. This is a huge problem for me, and that’s not fair.”
Frances’s expression turned dark. “Wait a minute—wedidn’t mess up anything, Edie. You did that when you took up with Simon. You made a huge problem forus.”
None of them knew the whole truth about what happened back then. How was she supposed to explain it? And why did she have to? She hadn’t asked for this. “It’s been more than forty years since I last saw you. I would say the problem worked itself out for you. I would say the problem really had more to do with your jealousy than anything else.”
Frances’s mouth gaped. And Edie couldn’t help noticing that Joan’s and Irene’s did, too. “You can’t be serious. I was on the run for two years, Edie. Two years! You think I wasjealous? Of that pernicious bag of wind? I never cared about Simon, I cared aboutyou. I cared how he was changing you.”
“He didn’t change me!” Edie protested. But there was a smallvoice in her head that said maybe he had. Before he’d threatened her, before he’d essentially imprisoned her, she had been changing to suit the rich, powerful man he was, because he was offering her a life she could never have on her own. She felt defensive of her younger self. “I saw security in him. Is that so hard for you to understand? You, of all people, who’d lost everything? Can you really blame me for wanting security?”
“No,” Frances said. “But you gave up on yourself to have it. So, I hope it was worth it.”
“Okay, okay,” Joan said, putting her hands up, coming between them. “It doesn’t need to be this dramatic.” Joan, always the voice of reason. “Edie, your granddaughter overheard us in a café this morning. We did not seek her out.”
“Look, it is what it is,” Irene said. “The question is, where do we go from here? I know where I want to go.” She picked up the bottle of champagne, unwrapped the cork cage, and popped it open. They silently watched as she poured champagne into four flutes, then handed them around. They all took one, unquestioningly. Irene held hers up. “To old times. They didn’t end like we hoped, but when we were good, we were so good. Not one of you can deny it.” She held out her glass to be toasted.
Joan did immediately, then looked at Frances and Edie.
Frances stood up, adding hers to the toast. She looked at Edie.
Edie sighed. She stepped forward and added her glass to the toast. And then she sat next to Frances. She suddenly felt as tired as Frances looked.
“All right, I give. What bullshit do you have in mind?”
Joan chuckled.
“We came to see you, first and foremost,” Frances said. “I wasn’t lying when I said I had missed you, in spite of everything.”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it,” Irene said. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand in the middle of this crazy-ass pumpkin patch, so I’ll just say it—Frances had a ridiculous idea.”
Edie’s pulse ticked up. “How ridiculous?”
Frances toggled her head back and forth. “On a scale of one to ten? An eight.”
“A ten,” Joan clarified. “Solid ten. A ten to the tenth power—”
“Okay, Joan,” Frances said.
“And the idea?” Edie pressed.
“One last heist,” Frances said. “For old times’ sake.”
Edie stared at her. Then at the other two. “Getting the gang back together again is one thing. Planning a heist? At our age? With all that water under the bridge? Insane. I can’t even comprehend how insane because the sheer stupidity of it is so mind-boggling.”
Frances grinned. “I knew you’d think it was bonkers. And maybe it is, I don’t know. But I didn’t want us to end like we did.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, as if this pained her. “I don’t want life to be over yet, but sometimes, it feels like it is, you know? Like we’re all just standing around waiting for the big moment. But who knows how long that might be? We may be old, and we’re not as nimble, and we can’t hear all that well … but we’re not dead. I still want to feel the thrill. I still want the excitement, the adventure. I think we still have something to offer the world.”
“A heist is the exact opposite of offering anything to the world,” Edie pointed out.
