The Marriage Pact (Hqn) by Linda Lael Miller

the ride, Bex spouting questions.
    Déjà vu all over again.
    It was comical, really.
    “Will everybody please take a breath?” Hadleigh said, while two women and a dog studied her curiously there in the foyer.
    “I couldn’t get a thing out of her,” Melody confided to Bex, as though Hadleigh were suddenly absent.
    Bex’s chameleon eyes, sometimes a pale shade of amber, sometimes green, widened with rising interest.
    “Not only that,” Melody went on, still ignoring Hadleigh, “but he was here. ”
    “Wow,” Bex marveled. She glanced upward. “And the roof didn’t fall in.”
    “You’re not breathing,” Hadleigh told her friends.
    They were breathing, of course, just not in the calming way she’d meant. On either side of her, Melody and Bex each took one of Hadleigh’s elbows and firmly propelled her back to the kitchen. They even sat her down in a chair, as though she’d been yanked from the jaws of certain death and might still be in shock.
    Muggles, tail sweeping back and forth, tagged along, cheerfully fascinated by all this moving from room to room. Strange creatures, these humans, she must’ve been thinking . No matter where they are, they want to be someplace else.
    Nothing was said, but Hadleigh’s two best friends went into action, as if they’d choreographed the scene beforehand.
    Bex slid a step stool in front of the refrigerator and climbed up to open the cupboard above, reaching past an I Love Lucy cookie jar and groping around for a lone and very dusty bottle of whiskey, last used to spike the eggnog at Christmas. It was still three-quarters full.
    Melody, meanwhile, took a trio of squat tumblers from another cupboard, carried them to the sink, then rinsed them carefully and dried them with an embroidered dish towel.
    Hadleigh watched, bemused, as did Muggles. The whole drill reminded her of the syncopated routines in the black-and-white movies her grandmother had loved to watch on TV, the ones performed in sparkling pools by bathing beauties in sleek one-piece suits and rubber swimming caps.
    With a flourish, Melody poured a double shot into each of the glasses, handed one to Bex and one to Hadleigh, with an appropriate flourish, and finally raised her own high, prepared to offer a toast.
    Hadleigh’s whirling brain suddenly snagged on a memory. They’d been supermarket premiums, those glasses, she recalled, with a pang of nostalgia, and Gram had collected them eagerly, one by one, until she had a set of eight.
    That hadn’t been like her grandmother, a nondrinker and a minimalist.
    Hadleigh, in junior high at the time, had finally asked Gram why she’d wanted the glasses, since they were never used. Her grandmother had smiled and said she liked the way they caught stray beams of light sometimes, giving off an unexpected shimmer, thereby brightening many an otherwise dull day.
    You were the one who brightened up the dull days, Gram, Hadleigh thought now. You, with your love and your laughter and with that magical smile of yours.
    Melody got Hadleigh’s attention with a loud “Ahem.” “To the marriage pact,” she said.
    “To the marriage pact,” Bex repeated, with less certainty.
    Hadleigh merely nodded and took a cautious sip from her glass.
    The whiskey burned the back of her throat and then proceeded to sear its way down her esophagus.
    Always a sport, Bex overcame her obvious hesitation, upended her glass, swallowed the contents in one gulp and immediately began to cough, choke and sputter.
    Grinning, Melody crossed to where Bex stood and, with her free hand, administered half a dozen brisk whacks on the back.
    Bex frowned at Melody, as though affronted, and said, “Geez, Mel, you don’t have to knock me over.”
    “Sorry,” Melody said lightly.
    “And,” Bex continued, “it probably isn’t smart to drink on empty stomachs. If we’re going to come up with a workable plan, we need to be sober, at least.”
    “You’re right,” Hadleigh said resolutely, setting her