The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

by Lisa Verge Higgins

Overview

A grave loss changes the lives of three friends in ways they never imagined in this warm and heartrending debut novel.

What makes a wife a lover?
For Kate, the spark went out of her marriage long ago but her husband doesn't seem to notice. Their role as parents consumes their lives so they need to rekindle the romance they once shared.

What makes a woman a mother?
For Jo, a high-powered career has led her to believe that she doesn't have a single maternal instinct. When an orphan unexpectedly enters her life, she is forced to confront her own unhappy childhood and the walls it has built around her heart.

What makes a man the love of your life?
For Sarah, home is the steamy jungles of Africa while the man of her dreams waits in the air-conditioned confines of Los Angeles. Her longing for this man from the past is blinding her to a new love standing right in front of her.

What these women all have in common is a friend with a generous soul, an irrepressible spirit- and a serious illness. In her final letters, Rachel raises one last question: What makes a friend live in our hearts forever?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446563512
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/26/2011
Pages:	341
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

While studying for her Ph.D. in chemistry, RITA finalist Lisa Verge Higgins penned twelve romance novels under her maiden name. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, an attorney, and their children.

Read an Excerpt

The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

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By Verge Higgins, Lisa

5 Spot

Copyright © 2011 Verge Higgins, Lisa
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780446563512

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chapter one

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?”

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Verge Higgins, Lisa Copyright © 2011 by Verge Higgins, Lisa. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"Get the first 'Best Read' of 2011...a love story about what it really means to be a friend."—Debbie Haupt, B&N General Fiction Book Club

"Higgins writes with grace and humor, reminding us to hold tight to the ones we love."—Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

"The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship is a lovely novel with moments of deeply moving insight into what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a friend. Read it and share it with your own friends-you'll be glad you did!"—Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Beachcombers

"Full of humor, love, and life lessons, this is an uplifting and satisfying novel that lingers long after the last page."—Elizabeth Noble, bestselling author of The Reading Group and The Girl Next Door

"[A] happy reminder that life is all about taking risks."—Publishers Weekly

"Offering words of wisdom from a dying friend, The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship inspires us to focus on what's really important in our lives."—Liza Palmer, international bestselling author of A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents

"An amazing novel of love, friendship, and community. A truly joyous read that marks an impressive debut."—Jane Porter, author of Flirting with Forty and She's Gone Country

"Poignant, romantic, and funny...about the need for our closest friends to occasionally give us a shove in the right direction when we've lost our way. You'll recognize yourself in these women. I loved it."—Claire LaZebnik, author of If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now

"Expertly woven together by Lisa Verge Higgins...simply but beautifully written...the common thread is Rachel, who has given the best gift a friend can give - a second chance."—RomanceJunkies.com

From the Publisher

"Offering words of wisdom from a dying friend, The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship inspires us to focus on what's really important in our lives."

Liza Palmer

"Poignant, romantic, and funny...about the need for our closest friends to occasionally give us a shove in the right direction when we've lost our way. You'll recognize yourself in these women. I loved it."

Claire LaZebnik

"Get the first 'Best Read' of 2011...a love story about what it really means to be a friend."

Debbie Haupt

"Full of humor, love, and life lessons, this is an uplifting and satisfying novel that lingers long after the last page."

Elizabeth Noble

"Expertly woven together by Lisa Verge Higgins...simply but beautifully written...the common thread is Rachel, who has given the best gift a friend can give - a second chance."

RomanceJunkies.com

"An amazing novel of love, friendship, and community. A truly joyous read that marks an impressive debut."

Jane Porter

"Higgins writes with grace and humor, reminding us to hold tight to the ones we love."

Luanne Rice

"The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship is a lovely novel with moments of deeply moving insight into what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a friend. Read it and share it with your own friends-you'll be glad you did!"

Nancy Thayer

At the urging of a dying friend, three women take life-altering risks.

As the novel opens, Rachel has already died of cancer. It is a cosmic joke that Rachel, mountain climber, base jumper, sky diver, lived a life of extreme adventure unscathed, only to succumb to an ordinary disease. After her death, her best friends receive letters with a last request: Kate, an over-scheduled soccer mom, is to go sky-diving; Sarah, a relief worker in Africa, is to track down the doctor she once loved; and career woman Jo, man-killer, is to become legal guardian to Rachel's 7-year-old daughter Gracie. After Kate sky-dives for the second time, she mentions it to husband Paul, who is none too pleased that his dependable wife is taking afternoons off to risk her life. But she loves it, and it makes her see how stiff her marriage has become, how tied to her children's lives she is, how she has somehow disappeared. The strain on her marriage is solidified when she decides to accompany Sarah to India to track down Dr. Colin O'Rourke. Fourteen years ago in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, the two fell in love, he left, and Sarah has been holding a torch for the god-like doctor ever since. Finding him is Rachel's last request, so once and for all Sarah can move on. When Sarah and Kate arrive in India, Sam, a dashing colleague of Sarah's in Africa, is there to greet them. It is no coincidence—he's in love with Sarah and has followed her, but she only has room for Colin. When they eventually meet, it seems he's been carrying a torch too. In the midst of this exotic romance, Jo is in New York with Gracie, as she tries to make a home (baby gates? Mac and cheese? Barbie?) for a traumatized orphan. Of course the women learn their lessons—live life more fully—but only Jo's challenge is vital: to learn how to become a mother.

Higgins balances humor and a touch of pathos to deliver an amiable tale of friendship.

Kirkus Reviews