The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

by Lisa Verge Higgins

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Rachel Braun was the inspiration to her group of friends, the one who lived each day to the fullest—and the one whose life was cut tragically short. Upon her untimely death, Rachel left letters for her three best friends challenging them to face their biggest fears.

Sarah, an international relief worker who calls the steamy jungles of Africa home, must travel halfway around the world to track down the only man she ever loved. Stay-at-home mom Kate must confront her fear of heights by skydiving and soon finds that her new hobby is affecting her once-tranquil marriage. She and her husband must find a way to rekindle the romance they once shared. And Jo, a media mogul voted “least likely to breed,” is given the most terrifying assignment of all: caring for Rachel’s orphaned and grieving little girl. In doing so, Jo is forced to confront her own unhappy childhood—and the wall it has built around her heart.

Even as these women mourn Rachel’s passing, her legacy lives on and their lives are enriched by a friend who, in many ways, knew them better than they knew themselves.

Release date: January 26, 2011

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

When the rumbling Cessna heaved into the sky, Kate Jansen completely lost her nerve.


She seized the strap of her seat belt as the whole plane shuddered. Through the dirty window she glimpsed Jo and Sarah—her
two best friends in the world—standing on the tarmac and shrinking swiftly into the distance.


“Now don’t you mind all the rattling, Miz Jansen,” Bubba shouted, patting the metal sides of the plane. “This old girl has
brought me safely up and down again a hundred times or more.”


Kate glared at her skydiving instructor. He sat facing her, dressed in his black-and-blue jumpsuit, looking like a giant mutant
housefly. He’d just spent two hours shoving her off ever-higher platforms onto thick mats, to teach her the proper falling
techniques in the airport’s single hangar. He’d promised her that the jump would conquer her fear of heights, her fear of
flying, her fear of everything. He promised her that the experience would completely change her life.


What the hell am I doing?

Breathe. Breathe. It had to be all right. Her friend Rachel Braun had done this a thousand and thirty-six times. Solo. But Kate would be diving with Bubba strapped to her back, hooked
to him at six points. Each hook could carry two hundred pounds, he’d told her, and so if four of them snapped off while they
were tumbling toward earth, well, a little thing like her shouldn’t worry.


The plane banked. Kate let go of the chokehold she had on her seat belt. She seized the ragged edge of the plywood she sat
upon. A thousand little splinters pierced her palms.


She was going to kill Rachel Braun for this. And she would—if Rachel wasn’t dead already.

The plane jerked in sudden ascent, and she cast about wildly, seeking escape—an exit, an out that didn’t involve tumbling
through the sky. Her gaze fixed upon a silver cross dangling from the rosary beads clutched in the other skydiver’s hands.
His name was Frank, Bubba had told her, a Franciscan monk who jumped a few times a year.


She wondered, in a panic, if a monk could take confession.

But what did she have to confess? She loved her life. She was a thirty-nine-year-old mother of three who had a comfortable
home with a cranky heater and flaking plaster walls. Her life overflowed with PTA meetings and Christmas-craft fund-raisers.
She baked bread on Sundays, slapping the dough with floured hands. Every other year or so, she’d do a twenty-mile walk for
one of Sarah’s charities.


She loved, most of all, her kids, whose faces she could summon up like spirits. Tess, trying to be cool while sucking on a
hank of hair, her cropped hoodie clinging to her rib cage; Michael, moody and dark and brooding like Heathcliff; and Anna,
little Anna, who gave small wet kisses like sparks.


Only a few hours ago, she’d signed fifteen pages of a contract that absolved the entire universe of any responsibility for loss of property, loss of limb, loss of life. It prevented anyone from even asking about her death—the death that would affect her three little beneficiaries, and her husband, too—who didn’t know that she
was currently approaching a cumulus cloud hovering a mile above the earth.


Suddenly the photographer stood up. He grasped the handle of the door just opposite the pilot’s seat and yanked it open to
a blast of sunlight and freezing air.


Ohmygod. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod—


“Don’t go cold on me now, Miz Jansen,” Bubba yelled over the roar. “Let’s go over procedures one more time.”

I can’t do this.

“Remember, breathe through your nose.”

I’ve got three kids to pick up from school this afternoon.

“We’ll hook up, walk to the ledge, and somersault out.” Bubba leaned in closer, so she could better hear the bellow of his
voice. “Then get into the arch position right away.”


The Franciscan stood up, palming the sides of the open door. He yelled something over his shoulder, and then made the sign
of the cross. Papers on the pilot’s clipboard rattled—two tore off and reeled into the wind.


Frank was gone.

Holy shit.

“C’mon, Miz Jansen.” Bubba grinned as he reached over and unbuckled her seat belt. “Let’s do this.”

“No…” The wind sucked the word from her mouth. “No…”

But Bubba didn’t hear her. He hauled her up with those ham-sized fists and then twisted her around like he was going to take her by the backside. She struggled to speak as she stood there with her knees buckling, bracing herself against the
back of the plane, while he pressed his long, hard body against her and hooked her up to him—six little hooks.


She forced air past her throat. “I’ve changed… my mind.”

“Ten minutes.” He moved against her. “Ten minutes, and we’ll be on the ground.”

Kate’s foot slipped off the plywood into a gully where the seats should have been. Something imploded inside her, shooting
sparks to her extremities, making her cramp into a curled ball of terror, held up by six little hooks. She seized a beam of
molded metal above a window, shouting, “You said… I could change my mind.”


“You’re not going to chicken out on me, are you, Miz Jansen?”

“I’m just… a housewife!”

“Right now you’re a sassy thirty-nine-year-old woman,” he bellowed, “with a big country boy strapped to your back.”

“I’ve got three kids—”


“Congratulations. You must be a heck of an athlete, keeping those abs of yours.”

“—I’ve got responsibilities.” She couldn’t breathe, and all the yelling hurt her throat. “I’ve got obligations. But Rachel died—she’s dead.”


Rachel, Rachel, why did you ask me to do this?

“Hey,” the pilot barked. “We’re over the drop zone! Get out!”

“Miz Jansen, you’ve got to make a decision now.”


“Rachel… Rachel died,” Kate stuttered, her whole body shaking. “That letter should have had instructions for her funeral.
Dirty songs to sing over her grave. Not… not this.”


Bubba yelled, “You opting out?”


“Yes!”

“You sure?”

“Yes!!”

Bubba sighed. She rose and fell upon the weight of it.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re done.”

Kate stilled. She kept her grip on the molding, slippery now with sweat. She heard her breathing, felt the slight banking
of the plane. “Really?”


“Oh, yeah. Really.” Bubba worked the hooks. He spoke close to her ear so he could make himself heard without yelling. “You
think you’re the first to give up, honey? Hell, no. Happens all the time.” He slipped the first hook free. “ ’Specially with
women like you. The ones staring down the barrel at their fortieth birthdays. Think they’re going to hurl themselves out of
airplanes to resurrect their wild youth. Never happens.”


“I’ve got… three kids.”

“So you said. It’s too bad you didn’t go. They’d never look at you in quite the same way.”

“Better that I’m around to see them,” she retorted. She straightened up, away from the cutting rumble of his voice. “Better
I’m alive on the ground—”


“Oh, sure,” he said. “Then you can go back to your soccer carpool. Flip out your foldable chair. Over a fancy coffee, tell
those other moms all about how you almost jumped out of an airplane.”


Hell, yes.

“And when you’re done, you can go home and dust the moldings, maybe scrub a toilet. Figure out how you’re going to cook chicken for dinner. Schedule a tune-up for your second car. Maybe slip in a load of laundry before bedtime. After
all, you have to get that stain out of Junior’s soccer pants. I hear Tide with bleach is the thing.”


Stop.

She didn’t need to hear it. She saw it, as clearly as she saw long wisps of clouds through the window. Oh, yes, the unfurling
of the long years, marked by yet another beach-house vacation and another project involving toothpicks and toilet-paper rolls,
another concert with the grammar-school band screeching “Hot Cross Buns.” Smiling all through it. Yes, this was fun; yes,
this is the life; yes, we’re a hundred thousand times blessed. Year upon year passes in clockwork predictability, and the
only things that change are the height of her kids, the baldness of her husband, and the width of her ass.


“Listen, asshole,” she yelled over her shoulder, “stop the reverse-psych crap. Sure, I’m a housewife, but it’s a hell of a
better way to spend my time than chilling in a morgue.”


“Like Rachel?”

Bubba yanked another hook free. He might as well have jerked it from her flesh. It left her speechless. Aghast. Grasping for
words.


Failing to find them.

Then he pushed against her, sensing her vulnerability. He pressed his stubbled cheek against her hair. “What do you think
your friend would give, Kate, for a chance to be up here again?”


Kate knew the answer. Rachel had lived for moments like this, made huge sacrifices for the adrenaline rush. Sacrifices Kate
hadn’t always agreed with.


But all that was over. All possibilities, for better or worse, were gone forever.


The pilot yelled, “Last chance, Bubba.”

Last chance.

The plane dipped. The wind battered the jumpsuit against her legs. Kate Jansen glared out at those blue skies, at the ground
so very far below. She glared up at the heavens. Didn’t know whether to curse Bubba or Rachel or her wretched self for the
foolishness she was about to attempt.


Bubba spoke, one last time.

“What’ll it be… wifey?”

“Sweet Jesus, she’s done it.”


Bobbie Jo Marcum stood on the tarmac, leaning against a rental car, watching one of her best friends float out of the October
sky. Even from a distance, Jo could see the grin splitting Kate’s face, as the man strapped to her back manipulated the ropes
in order to glide them both to the painted yellow target. They descended frighteningly fast, and hit the ground at a trot.
Behind them, the parachute deflated in graceful red folds.


Jo gave Sarah a bump of her shoulder. “Kate Jansen, mother extraordinaire, has just jumped out of an airplane. What d’you
think that means for us, sugar?”


“Never mind what it means for us,” Sarah said, as she shaded her eyes against the sun. “Think of what it means for Paul.”

“And those poor kids of theirs.”

“She’s overdue.” Sarah ran her fingers through a kinky mane of hair that hadn’t seen a stylist’s scissors in ten years. “I
don’t think Kate has had a proper steam-blower since before Tess was born.”


“Building up like a damn volcano.”

“Last one I remember was years ago, that climb we all took in the Shawangunks, a few months before she got pregnant. Three
bottles of red wine and a lot of yodeling.”


“Yeah, and a striptease in the Hudson Valley sunrise.” Jo grinned, remembering the frigid shower they’d all taken later, in
a small mountain cataract. “Gawd, I love that girl when she’s crazy.”


“So did Rachel.” Sarah’s voice went soft, and she turned her clear gray gaze to Jo. “Guess there’s no getting out of it now.”

“I hear you, sugar. I surely do.”

Jo let her gaze skid away. Go-for-it-all Kate had just thrown down the gauntlet by being the first to do what Rachel had asked
her to do. If the stay-at-home martyr could jump out of an airplane, well, then, Jo had better do what Rachel had ordered
in the ratty white envelope now folded in Jo’s pocket.


It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Only a few days ago, she’d gone to Rachel’s house. Rachel’s family had been sitting shiva. Jo and Kate and Sarah had taken
off their shoes and paid their respects, then wandered through a house with black-draped mirrors, tables full of hard-boiled
eggs, and a swelling crowd of friends and relatives they didn’t recognize. Jo kept expecting Rachel to jump out from behind
a door.


Gotcha.

Once, a long time ago, Jo bet twenty bucks that snowboarding would be the sport that would kill Rachel—especially after the
skiing accident in Colorado that left her in a body cast for two months. Kate put her money on skydiving—which would explain
why Rachel had ordered Kate up eight thousand feet. Sarah, long dubbed their moral and social conscience, was bewildered by the betting until Kate explained that it was good juju to bet against survival. Sarah was most concerned
about BASE jumping. She, the international public-health nurse, knew better than all of them the paucity of good health care
in the countries that turned a blind eye to a sport that involved leaping off skyscrapers or very high bridges. So, for the
nearly twenty years since they’d graduated from college, she and Kate and Sarah had held their breath on a death watch. But
you can only teeter on the edge of worry for so long. After a while, it became a running joke, yelled over crackling satellite
connections.


“Hey, Rachel, you still alive?”

Of course, Rachel hadn’t died in any of those expected ways. Rachel’s last terrible battle was the one adventure she’d kept
secret, until the very end. Maybe that’s why her death didn’t seem real. Any more real than seeing Kate Jansen skid into the
drop zone, buckled to a strapping hunk of man.


Sarah, breathless, skittered across the field to meet her. Her hand-dyed brown skirt flapped around her legs. Jo reached into
the car’s open window to push aside her cell phone, convulsing to the tinny chorus of “It’s Raining Men,” and hauled out a
bottle of peppermint schnapps. Cracking it open, she savored a swig, then winced at the sweetness. It reminded her of ice-skating
rinks and junior high and the boy who gave her her first kiss, Lonnie Clyde Barkley.


If only Rachel’s instructions had been “Get laid.” That would have been easy. Jo could have found someone in her BlackBerry,
and if her contacts didn’t pan out, there was always that hot divorcé in Accounting who’d been giving her the burning eye.
He had a crest of silky dark hair and a butt that could crack walnuts. She’d been debating whether a fling with him was worth the inevitable complications. Unfortunately,
Rachel hadn’t let her off the hook that easily. Her instructions to Jo were simply… unbelievable.


Jo followed Sarah across the field, swinging the schnapps. Kate unbuckled herself from a rugged bull of a man, and Sarah flung
her arms around her. Kate looked like someone had pulled her from the edge of the world. Flushed and wild-eyed and completely
incoherent.


“I can’t believe… Ohmygod… I just… I can’t believe…”

When it was Jo’s turn to hug, she felt the slamming of Kate’s heart. Jo offered her the schnapps. Kate grabbed it and took
the biggest swig Jo had ever seen her take. Except for one memorable evening in the spring of their senior year, when, stressed
after finals, Kate had gotten so looped she’d worn her own bra on her head and sung “The Hills Are Alive” from the roof of
their dorm.


Kate shook herself like a wet dog and thrust the bottle back at Jo. Then she let out a Kenilworth State University Rock Climber’s
Yodel that could probably be heard in Manhattan. The square-jawed rogue in the jumpsuit was grinning like he’d just given
Kate a double orgasm.


Sarah swayed around, dancing, trying to get Kate to describe it.

“It was like… being suspended.” Schnapps ran down Kate’s chin; she didn’t wipe. “The wind pushed me up.”

“Come on.” The hunk took Kate by the elbow and directed her toward the hangar. “Let’s get you undressed.”

“Oh, honey,” Jo murmured, as she and Sarah followed, “don’t talk like that. Kate’s a married woman.”

But I’m not.

He looked at Jo. The twinkle brightened in his eye. Jo savored the familiar tremor that shook her whenever she approached
a man high on testosterone. It might be worth jumping out of a plane, she thought, to be pushed up against that.

“It was… Time stopped.” Kate stumbled along. “It stretched. Nothing but air and noise. Ohmygod—”

“Looks like the schnapps is kicking in.”

“Oh, no,” the hunk said. “That’s pure adrenaline. The best drug in the world.”

“I JUST JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE!” Kate pulled away and twirled across the tarmac. “I JUST FREAKIN’ JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE!”

“You know, you might want to think about taking our Accelerated Free-Fall course,” the hunk began. “Then you can do it without
me strapped onto you—”


“Now, darling,” Jo interrupted, “what’s the fun in that?”

“By myself?” Kate was hopping around like a kangaroo. “Really? How long does it take?”

“It’s more extensive training, but if you’re serious, we can talk about setting you up….”

Jo narrowed her eyes as the hunk launched into his sales pitch. She skewered Kate with a good long look. No doubt it would
put a damper on the moment to tell Kate that they didn’t need another adrenaline junkie like their dead friend Rachel, or
to suggest it might be a good idea for Kate to let her own husband know what she was doing while the kids were at school.
But seeing Kate half crazed like this, totally cut loose, was becoming too rare a thing, like seeing the Tomato Queen catch
the mud-slick sow at the pig scramble. It only happened on the blue of a moon if it fell on a Saturday. It reminded Jo of the good ol’ Kate, the pre-wedding Kate, the pre-children Kate,
the old friend whose vibrant personality was fading into legend.


“CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! I JUST JUMPED OUT OF AN AIRPLANE!”

That airplane was landing now, roaring down the runway toward the same hangar they were heading toward. Kate danced ahead,
and Sarah, laughing, danced with her, and every once in a while Kate would scream some variation of “I just jumped out of an airplane!”

Of course, this gave Jo some time with Mr. Hunk, who’d fallen back to keep pace with her. She gave him a sidelong look. Southerners
were so thin on the ground here in New Jersey that Jo could recognize one from about fifty paces “So… is it Tennessee?”


“West Virginia.” He gifted her with a lopsided grin. “How ’bout you?”

“Kentucky purebred.”

“You’re a long way from home. Feel like taking a ride yourself?”

“Oh, how you talk.”

“I can give you a discount.”

“Tell me you’re not talking about airplanes.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “You are talking about airplanes.” She tried
to hide her disappointment. She supposed it was a tough way to make a living, convincing normally rational people to hurl
themselves into the void. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take my thrills on the ground.”


Preferably on my back.

“Maybe we can meet up later,” he said. “After work.”

“That’d be nice.” But Jo knew that kind of “maybe.” That hopeful, sort of interested, can-we-do-this-without-me-making-any-effort
kind of maybe. He was hot, but she couldn’t muster the effort right now. She had plans this afternoon, and, unfortunately,
they didn’t involve a raucous roll with this hard-bodied adrenaline junkie.


Inside the office, a guy still in his jumpsuit was busy editing a DVD. Kate wrestled herself out of the yellow suit, made
a frantic trip to the bathroom, commandeered the schnapps, then raced back to watch a video of herself falling out of the
sky.


It was pretty incredible. No goggles could hide the fact that Kate had been terrified. Yet, as she leaned out of the airplane
and the air pounded her cheeks, her expression shifted. She bloomed. The free-fall lasted less than sixty seconds; then the
hunk hit her on the shoulder, and she deployed the chute, zooming high up, out of the range of the camera. Everyone applauded.
The West Virginian handed her a certificate and a slim little DVD case, and Kate Jansen floated out of the hangar, her project
completed.


A-plus, as usual.

Boy, Jo thought, it was really going to twist Kate’s britches when she found out that the letters from Rachel were all mixed
up. That’s the only explanation Jo could come up with for what was written in hers.


“What now?” Sarah asked, her eyes lighting up. “Are we going for lunch?”

“Lunch—no.” Kate quivered with vestigial adrenaline. “I couldn’t eat. I can’t eat.”

“Sex is what you need.” Jo tossed the empty bottle in the garbage. In the back of her car, “It’s Raining Men” kept up a constant chorus. “You should surprise Paul.”


“Yes.” Kate beamed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. He’s at work. I’ll visit.”

After a few hugs she was gone, zooming out of the parking lot faster than safety allowed.

Jo swung an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “I’ll have lunch with you, sugar. It ain’t going to be nearly as fun as Paul’s lunch
hour, but I’m what you’re stuck with.” And lunch was as good a way as any to procrastinate a little more. “Besides, we have
to talk about Rachel’s envelopes.”


“I haven’t gotten mine,” Sarah said. “If Rachel sent it to Burundi, it’s lost forever. Can’t get a cow transported from Gatumba
to Bujumbura without paying three times its worth in bribes.”


“No, Rachel wouldn’t take that chance. She would have sent it to your parents’ house in Vermont. Where we used to send our
letters, in the bad old days, before the blessings of e-mail. You haven’t checked with your parents yet?”


“No. I suppose it’ll find me, sooner or later. Just as yours will find you.” Sarah’s clear gaze met hers. Sarah had an arresting
gaze; it was the most striking thing about her. Those unwavering gray eyes, the clarity of her freckled skin, and the way
she probed your face, as if trying to read whether you were one of the good guys or one of the bad. Jo figured it must come
in useful when you’re a nurse among refugees.


Jo shrugged her shoulders as if the envelope she hadn’t ’fessed up to wasn’t sitting right in her pocket. Yours will find you, too, Sarah, she thought. Kate and I will make sure of that.

Lunch was a simple affair, a quick bite at a local diner. Sarah scarfed down a cheeseburger and two root beers, as well as half of the French fries off of Jo’s plate—explaining, as
usual, that you can’t get a good cheeseburger outside the U.S. of A. It was just as well, because Jo for the first time in
a long time was too nervous to eat. She dropped Sarah off at the train station with promises to get together in the city next
week, before Sarah caught a plane back to Burundi. Sarah boarded the train, and Jo wished she had half the calm that Sarah
carried around her like a perfume.


Jo had turned off her cell phone during lunch. As soon as she turned it back on, it convulsed in her hand. She hooked up the
Bluetooth and put the car in gear before she answered.


“Geez, Jo, where have you been? I’ve been leaving messages on your cell for hours.”

Hector. Frantic again. She took a deep breath and put on her vice-president voice. “What happened at the meeting?”

“It was crazy, man, it was nuts. You wouldn’t believe what crap they were coming up with for the Artemis account.”

“Hector, I’m sure you came up with something good.”

“Oh, sure, loads of ideas. Like giving all the guests trench coats and fedoras, having fingerprint powder and magnifying glasses
as swag—”


“Oh, right. Gumshoe. That’s what I want to smell like: Hell’s Kitchen and stale cigarettes.” Jo shot the rental into third
gear, flexing her palm over the phallic shift. “It’s a perfume called ‘Mystery,’ not a bad pulp novel. What else?”


“Randy thought we could do some artsy black-and-white shots of girls bent over in the shape of a question mark, with, well,
their skirts hiked up just enough to reveal everything except… the mystery.”


“Typical Randy. What did he suggest we do at the launch? Dress the girls up in cheerleader outfits with question marks on
them? How ‘Riddler.’ No, thank you.” Jo would close her eyes if she weren’t doing seventy-five in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour
speed zone. “Tell me there were more ideas.”


“Jo, you weren’t here. I did my best in your place.”

“I know you did, Hector, and I appreciate how hard you’re working in my absence. But come on, I know that crowd, there must
have been something crazy enough to work.”


“Sophie had one.”

A cold chill ran down her spine. Sophie was an up-and-coming publicist with an eye on Jo’s position. Jo’s boss had already
noticed the ambitious Nordic beauty, and with reason: Sophie was young and energetic and full of half-baked ideas. Some of
which were not that bad.


“She wants to hire a model,” Hector said, “the one who just got busted with cocaine? Karin, Kate, Kathy something. We can
get her cheap, and by the time the launch gets off the ground—”


“Tell me you’re joking.”

“Sophie’s idea,” he sang, “not mine.”

“Right.”

“She says for the ads we can do a photo of the model’s face, but mixed up like a puzzle. Mystery, get it? Who’s the face of
Mystery?”


Jo paused. The idea wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. She envisioned magazine advertising—Vogue, Maxim, Glamour—maybe even a bit more downscale. Repeated for a month or two to build up curiosity—although the idea of keeping the identity
of the model under wraps was a logistical nightmare, full of nondisclosure forms and gags on the manicurist of the model’s publicist, etc. But then, at the launch, Artemis could
reveal the model. Preferably not Miss Drug Addict of the Month, of course, but someone… exciting, exotic. Mysterious.


“You like it.”

“It has possibilities.”

“Should I give her the go?”

“Absolutely not.”

Hector was making noises on the other end of the phone, the kind of noises that went along with grimaces, eye rolling, covering
of the phone receiver, general angst, and growing tension. She was sure he was sweating in his Brooklyn Industries T-shirt.
“Jo, the meeting with the Artemis brass is looming.”


“I know.”

“You’ve been gone three days, and we don’t even have an idea, never mind a proposal.”


“Better no proposal at all than a bad one. And we’ve put together proposals overnight before.”

“Yeah, and gave me angina in the process.”

“Hector, you’re twenty-eight years old, and you work out six days a week. It’ll be sixty years before you know what angina
is.”


“Angina? It’s you leaving me alone under deadline with these wolves.”

“Howl away, Hector. See if. . .