Fourteen #3
Frances’s expression turned dark. “Wait a minute—we didn’t mess up anything, Edie. You did that when you took up with Simon. You made a huge problem for us.”
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 was jealous? Of that pernicious bag of wind? I never cared about Simon, I cared about you. I cared how he was changing you.”
“He didn’t change me!” Edie protested. But there was a small voice 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.
“Don’t you miss it?” Frances challenged her.
Edie hesitated. She could feel the truth swirling around the pit of her.
How many times in her life had she asked herself if she was a bad person?
If she was missing some moral fiber that everyone else had?
Because she did miss it. She had missed it from the moment they disappeared from her life.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Sometimes. Back then, I felt like I was in control of me. Like I called the shots for me.”
“Exactly,” Frances said softly. “The world was ours for the taking.”
Still, Edie shook her head. She was different now. “I might miss it, but I’d never consider it. We’re not in our twenties, Fran. And we have so much more to lose.”
“Do we?” Joan asked. “Do we really?”
“Why is that even a question?” Edie asked. “We made it this far. Would you really trade freedom? Would you really risk your peaceful twilight years for three hots and a cot?”
“I don’t like to enter new ventures with a negative outlook,” Joan said. “But yes, maybe.”
Edie considered that. What did she have to lose, other than this house? Her strange marriage? Her kids were grown, her grandkids almost grown. What did she have, but her garden? Who even was she anymore? “What’s the heist?”
Irene immediately poured more champagne into her glass.
“Well … we’re a little stuck,” Joan said. “We don’t exactly have one.”
“You don’t have one?”
“See, we thought, or rather, I thought,” Frances said, “that we should just see if everyone was up for it first and go from there. You know, figure out what we can handle, based on our physical abilities, and knowledge of technology, and so forth.”
Edie instantly thought of Rocco. But that was an outrageous idea. How could they possibly take him on? “Are you telling me you came here and risked Simon seeing you without even knowing what the job was?”
“That’s what we are telling you,” Joan said. “And also … to see if we could trust you.”
“Okay, all right, I’m the devil. If you believe that, then why did you come for me?”
“Because we need you,” Frances said, giving Joan and Irene a look. “We can’t do it without you. We don’t want to do it without you. We’re like the Musketeers.”
Edie frowned. “Weren’t they honorable men? I don’t think they were a den of thieves.”
“Semantics,” Joan said. “Come on, what do you say? One for all and all for one, this time without anyone turning the others in?”
Edie groaned. “You all realize, don’t you, that the odds of us pulling anything off at this age are slim to none, right?
That we could very well be caught and hung out to dry?
And that if we were caught, the chances that Simon would rat us all out is guaranteed?
I, for one, don’t want to give up all that I have just for old times’ sake. ”
The three idiots looking back at her nodded, as if in agreement. They waited.
Edie groaned again. She downed the champagne. “This is so dumb. So stupid. I am strongly against it, and I will not have my granddaughter anywhere near you three. But the thing is … I have someone who needs to be taken down. And I might have an idea how.”