She drained the last of her margarita and picked up another photo. The warmth of fond recognition filled her. It was one of the first pictures taken of her, Irene, Joan, and Edie. They were atthe house in Southampton, on the terrace, sprawled on the stone wall that separated the pool area from the walk to the beach. It was the summer they’d all first met. There she was, her hair long ironed straight just that morning. Her halter top was too loose on her athletic frame, her bell-bottom jeans faded to perfection. Irene was next to her, small and sturdy, wearing overalls with only a bandanna tied around her chest underneath. Irene’s jet-black pixie cut and glasses were deceiving—she was a firecracker and smart like no one Frances had ever known. Next to her was Joan, tall and slender like a model, her Grateful Dead T-shirt knotted under her breasts, her midriff bare above her long Mexican skirt. In those days, she’d worn her hair in an Afro like Diana Ross did, but that day, she had on an overly large sun hat. And then there was Edith, or Edie as they called her, her arm loose around Joan’s waist. She had on a bikini top that barely covered her breasts; jeans cut off so short there was hardly anything left to the imagination. She had curly blond hair and sultry green eyes.
They were so young, so loose-limbed, so pretty.
Frances had met Edie first. She’d come to one of the parties Frances threw that summer. Her parties got dangerously big, honestly. People she’d never seen in her life were showing up, having heard from a friend of a friend. Edith came with a group like that. She was beautiful, with eyes that would draw you right in. But she was dressed in the wrong clothes. “You’re not seriously wearing plaid to a beach party, are you?” Frances had asked.
Edie had looked down at her clothes. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“Come on,” Frances had said, and grabbed Edie’s hand, pulling her to her room. She’d rifled through her closet, tossing tops and bottoms to Edie, even a couple of sundresses, until she found something that Edie liked. Frances learned that she was aging out of foster care and leaving, literally, with the clothes on her back. Frances told her she was aging out of her father’s orbit and had plenty of clothes to share.
Their friendship was born that night.
Edie introduced Frances to Joan and Irene. Joan was the youngest child of eight, a Catholic, and a lesbian. She was not welcome at home by her father. Irene was just Irene, caustic at times, entirely imperturbable, scary smart. No one really knew anything about her family, other than she was a Korean American.
But Edie was Frances’s ride or die. And when Frances’s father died in Sweden a couple of years later, it was Edie she turned to. Frances didn’t know how to bring his body home, how to have him buried. How to settle an estate. Edie had come right away, and was immediately on the phone, working things out.
When they finally did get him home and Frances buried him, she discovered that her father had changed his will at the last moment and left everything to Freya and Nils.Everything. Frances had been left with a gutted trust fund that wasn’t even enough to get her through college. The U.S. properties would be sold, the proceeds going to his widow.
It was the Swedes who’d done this to her, and specifically Nils. He’d manipulated her ill father, taking advantage of the distance between him and Frances, and making promises to a man on his deathbed he didn’t intend to keep.
“Because you’re a woman,” Edie said angrily. “He thinks he is superior.”
“In this case, he is,” Frances said morosely.
“Don’t ever say that, Frances Delafield!” Edie snapped. “He’s only superior if you let him be.”
Edie meant it—she wouldn’t let Frances take this lying down. Frances said it wasn’t the money as much as some things. Like the emerald-encrusted box her mother kept her rings in. It was priceless, an antique her parents had picked up in Vienna, worth more than all her mother’s jewelry. But it held a sentimental value for Frances—she would open the box and go through her mother’s rings, and her mother would tell her where each one came from, for what occasion. It also happened that it wasvaluable enough to send Frances to college or wherever else she wanted to go.
“We’re going to get it,” Edie announced. She’d called Irene and Joan. They had gone to her father’s wine cellar, helped themselves to the most expensive bottles, and hatched a plan. Their first heist was born.
Those turned out to be the best days Frances’s life. At least until she met Nick. But she had never felt so loved or wanted as she did sitting around with those girls, plotting to take down Nils Karlsson. They had no idea what they were doing, obviously, but went about it logically, planning every step along the way, delighting in each other and their preposterous plan.
The amazing thing was that it worked. They got the box back and with two valuable rings inside. Frances was still wearing the pink diamond after all these years to remind herself that she was a badass.
Tears blurred her sight as she gazed at the picture. She wanted to get that feeling back before she died—that feeling of belonging. Of being loved, no questions asked. Of being part of something that was more than just her. It would mean everything to do one last heist with her best friends. She imagined them all together now, planning one more for old times’ sake, something big and splashy.
She just needed to see them. To be with them. Even Edie.
Especially Edie.
The fight between the four of them had been explosive. They’d all said things they would never have said—or at least Frances had. But over forty years had passed since that terrible night. How long did grudges live? How long did hurt feelings and wounded pride get to rule? Frances didn’t care about that fight anymore and hadn’t for a long time. What she cared about was her friends.
When she was handed a terminal sentence, her first instinct was panic. A palpable fear of leaving a life undone. That’s howbucket lists are made, all the things left to do. But days after the initial fear and panic had worn off, Frances began to realize that if she were to make the proverbial bucket list, there wouldn’t be much on it. What was left for her to do or see? Of course she didn’t want to leave Aaron or her grandkids. Or even Marjorie, for that matter. But neither did she want to be anyone’s burden or to live in pain. If there was one thing Frances had prided herself on since she was a girl, it was her ability to take care of herself. She’d been doing it since she was twelve.
She’d thought about it, had spent a couple of sleepless nights with it. And when all that fretting and gnashing of teeth was done, she had concluded that she was one of the lucky ones who had done all the important things she would ever want to do. She’d seen the world. She’d lived well, had been blessed with the love of her life. She’d raised a gorgeous son who was raising gorgeous daughters, and she wasn’t really needed. What would she miss, other than all the seasons ofBridgerton?
It was funny—the thing that kept coming to mind was the same thing that had been skirting around her thoughts for a few years now, weaving in and out like a garden snake. She wanted to see the gang again. The four of them had found each other at a time when they’d all needed someone who cared, and oh, how they’d cared for each other. She missed them deeply, missed what they had meant and been to each other.
Frances wanted to know everything about them now. Like who had touched their lives, who had hurt them, who had loved them. Had their lives unfurled like they’d wanted? She imagined them all laughing about how it sucked to get old. Or all of them singing their favorite Journey song, “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
She didn’t want to leave this earth without reconciling with them. And maybe, just for fun, because she needed to feel so alive before she wasn’t, and maybe they needed that, too, pulling one last heist.
There was nothing else she hadn’t done or felt she needed to do. Nothing else she felt was missing in her life.
Well, there was her answer, then, Frances thought as she got to her feet on her way to make another margarita. That was it, the one thing she needed to do before she said sayonara. She was going to get the gang back for one last heist or, as they used to vow to each other, die trying.
Four
Sixty-some-odd years ago, when Edith Smith was a twelve-year old in foster care, she would watch old Hollywood movies. The grand homes and genteel people who inhabited those black-and-white films made her yearn for a family. She wanted to be the woman who swept in with a vase of flowers to put on the coffee table, who was adored by her husband and children, who was a paragon of charity and virtue.
