Alice smiled back at Joan. “She is such a good dog. She stays right with me, whether she has a leash on or not. And she’s very protective of me.”
“Are you still running with your gun?” asked Ellie.
“Sometimes,” said Alice. “But I don’t take it every time. And I don’t take it on the weekends because Dave has started running with me again.”
“What?” Joan’s eyebrows met with her trimmed black bangs. “You have not said a word.”
“Don’t get carried away,” said Alice. “It has just been the past two Saturdays.”
“What brought this on?” asked Joan.
Alice shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ve been making more time for each other. And I think everything that has happened and everything I have said has finally worked its way through his brain and opened his eyes to how he has been treating me. I have no doubt that he loves me, but for many years, he simply put me at the back of the line. And this is partly because, as soon as my daughters were born, that’s exactly where he fell in my world. We are working on putting each other first—or at least closer to the top.”
“And how does that feel?” asked Ellie.
Alice smiled. “Pretty good,” she said. “It feels pretty good. Plus, he told me yesterday that he’s fully covered at both stores for the trial next month. He said he wants to be with me every day of it.”
“That’s great news, Alice,” said Joan. She spooned some chowder into her mouth, swallowed, and then said, “And you know I will be there as often as I can be.”
“Me too,” said Ellie.
“Look,” said Alice. “You two have been with me all along on this. You have jobs. You have lives. You”—she looked at Ellie—“have romantic relationships to pursue. Come when you can, but know that when you can’t, I will be okay.”
“You are already okay, Alice,” said Ellie.
Someone’s phone rang; Joan assumed it was Alice’s. “You can check your phone, Alice,” she said.
“It’s not mine,” said Alice. “Mine’s on vibrate.”
“Oh—that’s my phone,” said Ellie, reaching for her purse. Alice and Joan looked at her, wondering who was calling. Ellie’s phone had not rung once over the course of a year of biweekly lunches. Ellie studied the screen and then looked up at her friends. “It’s my mother,” she said, just before she answered.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY
Susan Kietzman
About This Guide
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s
reading of Susan Kietzman’s
Every Other Wednesday.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Alice, Joan, and Ellie know one another from their children’s participation in the high school drama department—but they do not become friends until after their children have graduated. Does this timing affect the nature of their friendship?
2. Why is running again so important to Alice, especially since she has been pursuing other forms of exercise?
3. Joan keeps her gambling habit a secret from both Alice and Ellie, as well as from her husband—which indicates that she knows gambling is not something they would advise her to continue. And yet she does. Why does she persist?
4. Ellie and her husband, Chris, have not spent one night apart from each other in their entire marriage. Is this typical? Is this admirable or unhealthy?
5. The women meet for lunch every other Wednesday. Is getting together every week too often and once a month not enough, as Joan suggests, to build and then sustain a friendship?
6. What do the parents of Joan, Alice, and Ellie have in common—and what effect has their parenting had on the three women?
7. What changes Alice’s mind about her commitment level to the Well Protected Women?
8. What event makes Joan finally decide that enough is enough? Why is this the moment she knows she needs to change her behavior?
9. How and why is Ellie able to suppress her true feelings for so long?
10. What makes the three friends often able to speak honestly and also to confront one another when many people are more likely to hold their tongues rather than risk offending a friend?
11. The husbands of the three women occasionally move to the foreground, but they are more often in the background. Why?
12. Is the search for self-identity ever over? Where are Alice, Joan, and Ellie on this path when the novel ends?
Every Other Wednesday Page 30
