Kindred Spirits Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Strohmeyer

  The Penny Pinchers Club

  Sweet Love

  The Sleeping Beauty Proposal

  The Cinderella Pact

  The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives

  Bubbles Betrothed

  Bubbles A Broad

  Bubbles Ablaze

  Bubbles in Trouble

  Bubbles Unbound

  Bubbles All the Way

  DUTTON

  Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First printing, July

  Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Strohmeyer All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Strohmeyer, Sarah.

  Kindred spirits / Sarah Strohmeyer.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-53226-3

  1. Female friendship—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction. 3. Drinking customs—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.T6972K56 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2010042288

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  For Lisa

  My “kindred spirit” for forty- three years and counting

  “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

  —CICERO

  (An Excerpt from Best Recipes from the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Marshfield, 1966)

  The Art of Mixing the Perfect Martini

  A martini is the world’s most sophisticated cocktail, a classic of beauty and simplicity that derives its intoxicating allure from the melding of four strikingly different sensations.

  But there is only one way to correctly mix the perfect martini, and few know the secret method—until now.

  Begin with a chilled martini glass. Add half an ounce of dry vermouth for softening, swirl, and shake out every last drop. Refrigerate the glass again.

  In a clean glass pitcher, combine the best possible gin at room temperature and fresh ice made from clear mountain spring water, and stir—never shake, lest you bruise the gin’s delicate charm. Pour into the chilled glass and garnish with a thin lemon peel twist.

  Strong.

  Soft.

  Cold.

  Tart.

  These are the four diverse elements that combined in correct proportions create nothing short of a divine elixir, especially when shared with good friends.

  Now you know.

  —Mrs. DeeDee Patterson, Chairwoman

  Chapter One

  Lynne Flannery took it as an encouraging sign that the day of her last martini would be the anniversary of her first.

  Even the weather was identical—a postcard-perfect New England fall afternoon heralded by red, orange, gold, and green leaves fluttering against a brilliant blue sky. That morning, Canada geese had flown overhead in an ever-shifting V, squawking and vying for top position, and now the last lingering robins had disappeared seemingly overnight.

  Her brazenly illegal burn pile roared full blast, tingeing the air with the sharp scent of woodsmoke—along with a sense of change. A shift from the frenetic business of living to something quieter, something that required reflection and respect for the passing. What her father used to call the “locking-down period.”

  Girls just want to have fun, she hummed, systematically emptying one pill bottle after another into the flames that leaped and cracked to catch the tablets of magnesium and Emend on their hot tongues.

  “Bye-bye, suckers. Thanks for nothing!”

  She threw in what was left of the ginger crackers and Saltines and the self-help books with their relentlessly upbeat titles—You, Too, Can Survive Cancer; The Top Ten Rules to Beating the Odds; Mind Does Matter: Think Your Way to Health.

  Well, she’d thought and thought and thought so hard her brain hurt almost as much as the rest of her body. For eight years, she’d thought her way to health and still those cells kept replicating and replicating, building upon one another like Tetris blocks until it was Game Over.

  The fire roared in gratitude and she blew it a kiss. “No,” she said, “thank you.”

  Oh, Mother dear, we’re not the fortunate ones. And girls they want to have fun. Cyndi Lauper, singing her life story.

  She poked the smoldering burn pile and surveyed the garden into which they’d invested a lifetime of labor—the brick patio Sean had built himself after much swearing and sweat; the asparagus patch long gone to seed; the McIntosh trees, once spindly twigs from the nursery, now drooping under the weight of ripe, red fruit. At last her gaze rested on their sons’ old redwood swing set, long neglected, that after much hemming and hawing they’d decided to leave for future grandchildren.

  Lynne closed her eyes, imagining those grandbabies, redheaded like her, fat cheeks dotted with freckles, laughing as they crawled up the yellow slide. It was almost as good as seeing them for real, even if she’d never be able to hold them or sink her nose into their soft curls.

  Anyway, it would have to do. She was trying to be grateful for what she had been given instead of bitter over what she wo
uld lose, because what she would lose had never really been hers. This was, perhaps, the most worthwhile lesson she had gleaned from this otherwise useless, rotten, lousy disease. Life is a lease and God is the landlord. We mortals could stake no claim.

  She spritzed the fire with bottles of grapeseed extract and pomegranate juice, hosed it down for good measure, and nearly stubbed her toe on the hoe her husband had carelessly deposited by the garden.

  Sean would let the hoe lie there all winter, rusting under the snow. So, with much difficulty, she got herself to the garage and hung it on its hook. Slipping out of her pink garden clogs, she opened the side door to the kitchen, shrugged off her zip-up jacket, and washed her hands at the sink, leaning heavily against the basin.

  Only three thirty and already the sun was low in the sky. The school bus passed, stopping with a whoosh of its brakes at the Brezinskis’ house. The doors opened, unleashing the cacophony of shouting children and the two Brezinski boys ran up their driveway, tossed their backpacks onto the lawn, and tumbled in a mock fight for the entertainment of their fellow inmates. Lynne dried her hands on the red gingham dish towel and shook her head. Those Brezinski boys were going to be making news someday. One way or another.

  Time to call Tiffany.

  Tiffany could barely hide her relief when Lynne told her she was giving her the night off. “Go see a movie,” Lynne said. “Have some fun for once. Forget about me.”

  Babysitting a terminally ill woman was no job for a person with Tiff’s vitality. The woman might be in her twenties, but she couldn’t stand still for five minutes without bubbling like a kid. She was exactly like her mother, Mary Kay, a ball of constant energy. A force majeure!

  Lynne had been worried about what would happen to Tiffany after she was gone. But lately she’d been considering the flip side, that by stepping out of the picture she’d be opening the cage doors and setting this wild bird free. Tiffany could return to her beloved Boston and a much more exciting job in the Mass General ER instead of babysitting her mother’s friend who mostly dozed and stared out the window.

  Yes, it would be a good thing. Good for everyone.

  When she was done talking to Tiff, Lynne left the phone off the hook and tackled the stairs. It took so long, what with stopping and sitting to rest at every other step, that it was almost dusk when she reached her bedroom. After a nap, a brief shower, and a change into her pj’s and fluffy flannel housecoat that she would. . . not. . . miss, she opened the top drawer of her bureau for a pair of socks and caught sight of the orange envelope addressed to the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Martinis. No, that would never do. Sean or his snooping sister Danielle would find it and that would be the end.

  She opened the envelope to check the contents once more: a note to Julia, another to her mother, a two-page explanation for the girls, and the book that started it all—Best Recipes from the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Marshfield, 1966—its formerly pristine white paper cover stained with grease spots and ripped in one corner.

  Sitting on a small chair Sean had brought up just for her, she flipped past hors d’oeuvres, soups and salads, main courses, side dishes, and desserts to find what mattered most: The Art of Mixing the Perfect Martini.

  Of course, these days you couldn’t put out a community recipe book with alcoholic drinks—not even a sparkling wine punch—without the Carrie A. Nations of this politically correct town wielding their hatchets. But back in the ’60s, as Lynne vaguely recalled, martinis represented the height of sophistication—James Bond, the Rat Pack, long legs, tight capri pants, and bouffant hair.

  Mary Kay liked to remind their tiny group of martini drinkers—the “Society,” as Lynne, Beth, Carol, and Mary Kay called themselves—that the year this cookbook was written, Johnny Carson had just published Happiness Is a Dry Martini, featuring his bawdy drawing of a naked woman on the cover. Lynne would never forget coming across that on the bookshelf of her parents’ modest Pennsylvania house, along with Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), and wondering what her churchgoing, conservative parents really did with their nights after she went to bed.

  Her finger traced DeeDee Patterson’s quirky handwritten notes next to each recipe:

  The Cosmopolitan—Served 7/10/67 at cabin. Soothed ruffled feathers. Add splash more Cointreau.

  The Manhattan Martini—B. Newell drank three, donated $500 to Bill’s campaign. Makes a man feel like a man.

  The Dirty Martini—Oooh! The Society’s favorite. Sipped to “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” Naughty fun!

  And the most powerful of all, the Classic Martini, gin, a whiff of vermouth, three olives on a toothpick. Elegance in a glass. Cannot be topped, DeeDee wrote. Gets you whatever your heart desires.

  They’d tried them each with glee, finding DeeDee’s observations consistently proved true. Thanks to the invention of flavored vodkas, they even went on to create their own—Persephone’s Cosmos, Ginger-Pear, Chocolate-Raspberry Decadence, Lemon, and Clean Apple.

  These were not mere drinks. They were potions, magical elixirs that transported them from their everyday occupations as mothers, a librarian, a nurse, a lawyer, and a teacher, to gloriously free spirits. Gorgeous, twirling, fabulous bon vivants! On some martini nights they ended up bobbing in Mary Kay’s pool as a milky mist rose to meet the full moon. One winter, fueled by ginger brandy, Carol streaked naked out of the sauna, running smack into the Markowitzes cross-country skiing across Kindlewah Lake, and was so mortified she leaped into a snowbank for cold protection.

  Then there was the early summer evening thick with the sweet scent of Mary Kay’s tea roses, when they lay on her green grass, headto-head, hand in hand, forming a single large flower of women, strong and united, blissfully at peace.

  Lynne closed the cookbook and studied the Kodachrome photo of the original Society perched in a semicircle on an elaborate memorial in the Old Town Cemetery that, thanks to their efforts, had been declared a national historic landmark. Their slim ankles crossed demurely, hands folded neatly in the laps of their short pastel dresses, sprayed hair swept into elegant blond or sleek chestnut updos, they were the picture of perfect propriety and breeding.

  And yet, a keen eye would notice that behind each woman peeked the rim of a martini glass, a glimpse into what actually transpired at those conservation meetings when they weren’t researching Marshfield’s role in the Revolutionary War or preserving graveyards. DeeDee Patterson, trim, blond, and buxom, hardly the proper wife for a state assemblyman, sat front and center, a sly smile playing at the corner of her wide, red lips.

  DeeDee, like many original members of the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Marshfield, was gone now, her beautiful remains entombed just beyond where she sat in the photo. Others had dispersed to warmer climes, but were they still together in spirit? Lynne hoped so, because she could not imagine eternity without Mary Kay, Carol, and Beth. Or, as they’d officially dubbed themselves during one particularly merry night of perhaps too many Cosmopolitans, the Ladies Society for the Conservation of Martinis.

  Love you! She kissed the old recipe book and stuffed it back into the envelope along with the rest of the letters, resealed it, and pressed it to her chest. It was to these women, her closest friends, she would entrust the one task—the most important task, really—that bully cancer had refused to let her finish. She couldn’t imagine anyone else handling the job—certainly not her husband.

  For as much as she loved Sean, he would have been so hurt to learn that for decades she’d hidden this secret. But they would understand completely. They would set things right without Sean or the boys ever discovering the truth, so she could rest in peace.

  Knowing this was the only way she could leave.

  She hid the envelope under the protective safety of nightgowns and slips like a squirrel storing its treasured nut for her babies to find the following winter. One of the agreements they’d forged early on in the Society was that, should one of the
m pass, only a Society member would be permitted to clean out the personal belongings of another Society member. This vow was as sacred as never speaking ill of another’s husband and—perhaps most holy of all—never adding “tini” to a drink simply because it contained alcohol. The addition of vodka no more made some lesser beverage a martini than the ridiculous addition of carats transformed a cubic zirconia into a diamond.

  Martinis were sacred.

  Downstairs, the brisket Beth had dropped off while Lynne was sleeping simmered in the Crock-Pot. “Thanks, kiddo,” she whispered, yanking the plug.

  As her next-door neighbor, fellow Society conspirator, and best friend, Beth didn’t ask, she just did. Cleaned out the coat closet. Bundled up the recyclables and old newspapers. Scrubbed down the bathrooms. Stocked the refrigerator for Sean. Emptied the cat’s litter box and took home two loads of laundry, returning them the following day clean and folded, picked up the prescriptions and made dinner three times a week.

  Lynne was pretty sure she would have checked out long ago if it hadn’t been for Beth holding on, refusing to give in, certain that if she turned her back for just one minute, Lynne would slip away.

  And she was right, Lynne thought, bypassing the stack of letters that had taken weeks to write, along with the newly paid bills and envelopes containing spare keys, instructions, and various account passwords for Sean, who would never remember.

  Chores over, duties done, she pulled herself onto a chair by the liquor cabinet over the refrigerator and let her fingers flutter across the bottles until they landed on the one she needed—a bottle of Hornitos tequila.