Sisterhood Everlasting

by Ann Brashares

  Looking around at the hopefulness in my friends’ faces, I couldn’t help staring behind me into the cave where we’d dwelt for the last five months, really the last two years. In my mind’s eye, I tried to see these faces as they had been the first time we opened this suitcase. But then, why do that to yourself?

  How did Tibby achieve these transformations? I don’t know. There have always been mysteries in our friendship.

  Where will we go from here? I don’t know that either. Tibby’s parents and sister and brother are supposed to leave on Sunday, but I’m not sure about the rest of us. I’ve got a little house to furnish. I’ve got a small girl to love. New York is close enough to drop in for an audition once or twice a week if I need to. I’ve got a heart that appears to have broken open. I feel hopeful where I am.

  Eric is talking about switching to a New York firm, commuting three days a week so Bee can raise animals, make a vegetable garden, and grow her baby alongside Bailey in a place where she’s happy.

  Bridget looks older and obviously a bit rounder, but I’ve never seen her lovelier. Lena bought a pair of scissors and expertly cut off the matted ends of Bee’s hair. Bee let me wash her hair in the sink with my most outrageously expensive shampoo and sat cross-legged and talking on my bed for hours while I combed it out.

  Kostos is on leave from work. Though they won’t stay here forever, I don’t see him and Lena going anywhere anytime soon. “Already we’re living together,” Kostos said with a knowing laugh to Lena over breakfast this morning. “What would our grandparents say?”

  Two days ago he disappeared in the afternoon and returned with a full-size easel for Lena, which he proudly set up for her by the northern windows in a wash of artist’s light.

  And in the middle of us is Bailey, joy of our hearts. It seems to me we all arrived here lost and lonely, needing something we couldn’t name, pent up with love. Tibby named it. She must have known how much we had to give.

  A long time ago Tibby had a friend named Bailey, for whom little Bailey is named. The first Bailey died tragically young, and her death struck Tibby hard. But I once heard Tibby say that before Bailey died she’d left Tibby everything she needed to live a happy life, if only Tibby was wise enough to take it.

  And now we are the ones wisely taking what Tibby left for us. I guess you could say Tibby’s magic is deep and lasting. I don’t know when any of us will go.

  But I know this. We’re ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Jennifer Hershey, first and foremost. I would also like to thank Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Gina Centrello, Beverly Horowitz, Leslie Morgenstein, Josh Bank, and Jodi Anderson.

  With love, I acknowledge my parents, Jane and Bill Brashares, my husband, Jacob Collins, and my children, Sam, Nate, Susannah, and the little one soon to be born.

  About the Author

  A lover of summer, pants, and travel, ANN BRASHARES lives in New York City with her husband and their three children. Her Sisterhood novels—The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; The Second Summer of the Sisterhood; Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood; and Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood—comprise an internationally bestselling, award-winning series that inspired two major motion pictures and reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Her new standalone novel is My Name Is Memory.