“I sure did.” Grabbing a couple of potholders, I open the oven door and pull out my creation, which smells amazing if I do say so myself. “It’s got sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, and feta cheese.” I pass the quiche under Sloane’s nose to entice her with its aroma.
“Spinach?” She makes a face.
“Eating a green vegetable won’t kill you.” I set the quiche down on the stovetop.
“You sound like Mom.”
I smirk. Our healthy food-worshipping mother never could understand Sloane’s aversion to anything that wasn’t packaged in cellophane or Styrofoam and chock full of preservatives. “Don’t worry. I’ll spare you the lecture on how you should appreciate all the edible gifts provided to us by Mother Earth. You won’t even taste the spinach in the quiche, just the cheese and onion, I promise. This needs to cool off for a few minutes before I can cut into it. Let’s have some lemonade while we wait and you can tell me about your day. Was it a rough one?” Opening the cabinet to my left, I extract two large plastic cups with Sloane’s company’s logo on them.
She shrugs. “Not particularly. Why?”
I point at her face. “The Forehead Crease of Doom has been wedged between your eyebrows ever since you got home.” It probably wouldn’t be so obvious if Sloane wore her bangs straight like I do, but she always parts her hair on the left and sweeps her bangs off to the side so that her forehead is somewhat exposed.
“So, you’re saying I need Botox?” Sloane self-consciously touches the area of her face right above her glasses.
“No, I would never say that. Botox is poison.” I remove the pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade I made from the fridge. “I just know that the Forehead Crease of Doom means you’re fretting about something and I’d like to help if I can.” I pour some lemonade into a cup and hand it to her. “If work’s not the problem, what is? Are you having man trouble?”
She snorts with amusement. “When have I ever let a man trouble me?”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I say, taking a sip of my lemonade.
“I suppose,” she replies noncommittally, then samples her own drink. She immediately purses her lips and acts like it’s a great effort to swallow the liquid. “Oh, my God! That is so tart; I think it made my tongue shrivel up. Did you forget to put in the sugar?”
“Of course not. I used a few drops of agave nectar, which is a natural . . .”
Sloane’s not listening because she’s reaching behind me to pull a bowl of granulated white sugar out of the cabinet. She scoops three spoonfuls of the icky stuff into her lemonade and stirs it with her finger. “Mmmmm, much better,” she decrees after gulping down half a cup.
I feel queasy at the thought of all that sugar flooding her system. Good thing diabetes doesn’t run in the family. At least not on our mother’s side. I have no idea what diseases lurk on our father’s. As far as I know he’s still alive, so that’s a good sign since he’d be in his mid-fifties now. Wait, is that right? How much older was he than Mom? Let’s see, she’d just graduated high school when they met, so she was eighteen. And he was about to start his senior year of college, so he would have probably been twenty-one. But Mom had a birthday that October, making her nineteen when she had us. If our father didn’t have a birthday during that eight-month stretch, they might not be a full three years apart. Oh, boy, this would be a lot easier to figure out if I knew exactly when Dad’s birthday is. Hold on, didn’t Mom once say that our father was a Taurus? Or maybe it was a Sagittarius. Mom’s a Libra and Sloane and I are technically Aries, but we were born on the cusp and I really think that I’m more of a Pisces while Sloane is definitely– Okay, why is she staring at me with that irritated expression on her face?
“Yoo-hoo.” Sloane waves at me. “Did you hear what I just said or were you receiving an incoming message on your Pet Psychic Hotline?”
Now that she mentions it . . . “Uh, yeah, will you excuse me for a sec?” I pull my cell phone out of the side pocket of my dress and dial our neighbor’s number.
“Hello?” a creaky, old voice answers.
“Mrs. Langley?” I shout because she’s hard of hearing. “It’s Willa Tobin, from next door.”
“Oh, hello, dear, how are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you. I was calling to let you know you accidentally shut Mr. Cuddles in the laundry room and he really needs to get out so that he can use the litter box.”
“For heaven’s sake, I can’t believe I did that again. Thank you so much for telling me, dear. I really appreciate it. I hope you’ll come by for a visit soon; Mr. Cuddles would love to see you.”
Mr. Cuddles, a tuxedo cat who was rescued by a lonely Mrs. L after her husband passed, is quite the charmer. The last time we met, he tried to woo me with a freshly-killed mouse, which he deposited at my feet with a courtly head dip. It was one of the nicer gifts I’ve ever received from a suitor.
“Of course. How about next Wednesday at three?”
“Wonderful. I’ll make some oatmeal raisin cookies. I know those are your favorite.”
How sweet of her to remember! “I would love that, Mrs. Langley. Thank you. I’ll see you and Mr. Cuddles on Wednesday.” I disconnect the call and return the phone to my pocket.
“Mr. Cuddles sent you a 911 that he had to pee? Why didn’t he just relieve himself on a pile of whites?” Sloane stretches out a hand toward the cooling quiche. I don’t need twin telepathy to know that she intends to break off a piece of crust.
“That would have been undignified, and Mr. Cuddles is a classy cat.” I lightly smack her hand before she can tamper with the pie. “Five more minutes.”
Sloane groans with frustration.
“Let’s get back to what’s bothering you. Are you sure it’s not a man? Because you could tell me, you know. If you were involved with someone . . .”
“I don’t have time to date right now. I’m totally focused on my career.” This is Sloane’s stock response to any inquires about her love life.
“I didn’t say ‘date.’ Relationships between men and women don’t have to be labeled.
Sometimes they just are . . .”
“Exhausting? Aggravating? A waste of time? Yeah, I’d agree with all that.”
“You wouldn’t feel that way if you found a guy you were simpatico with, someone as smart and ambitious as you, a professional type who values the finer things in life, like good clothes, a nice car–”
“Maybe a BMW.” Sloane raises an eyebrow questioningly.
“Sure, why not? BMWs are good cars, aren’t they? They look really sleek and elegant and they cost a lot of money, so you’d have to be successful in order to afford one. Do you know anyone who drives a Beemer?”
“Wow,” Sloane shakes her head in disbelief, “you are so bad at this. It’s like being interrogated by Strawberry Shortcake. Actually, she’d probably be more crafty about it than you. ‘Do you know anyone who drives a Beemer?’ Seriously?”
I guess I tipped my hand. Sloane’s right. I do stink at subterfuge. “I would have asked you outright, but you’re always so–”
“Gav is dead,” she vows while pouring herself some more lemonade. “I should have known when he ran into Josh outside last week that he was going to run straight to you and blab about it. He’s like some gossipy teenage girl.”
Oh, shoot, now Gav’s going to get in trouble, which I promised him he wouldn’t. I need to bail this out ASAP.
“Um, to be fair, Gav’s known about this Josh guy for months and he only told me today because I threatened to tickle it out of him. What’s the big deal anyway?” Good, Willa. Put her on the defensive. “I’m your sister. You don’t have to keep things from me. Is there something wrong with this Josh guy? Gav did say he looked like a d-bag.”
She rolls her eyes. “That is so typical! Gav never has anything positive to say about any of the men in my life. They’re always ‘douchebags,’ or ‘jackasses,’ or have ‘sticks up their butts.’”
“Yeah, well, that
works both ways. When have you ever liked one of his girlfriends?”
“Please,” she scoffs. “His girlfriends are nothing but tramp-stamped airheads who make minimum wage and can’t string two sentences together to carry on a semi-intelligent conversation. They’re all totally scorn-worthy.”
“What about Thea? She was a lawyer.”
“And a condescending bitch who tried to deball Gav. Thank God he finally wised up on that one. Can you imagine if he’d gone through with marrying her? BLECH”
The funny thing about Sloane having such an aversion to Thea is that the two of them are actually very similar – in looks (both are tall, slim brunettes with blue eyes) and in personality (competitive, career-obsessed women who don’t suffer fools gladly and always want to be in the driver’s seat). Under different circumstances, they might have been friends, but that wasn’t going to happen while they viewed each other as a threat.
“Yeah, I think it’s best for everyone that their relationship didn’t work out.”
“Me, too. I would have hated to see Gav get hurt. I’m protective of him.”
“Protective, or . . . territorial?”
“Don’t start,” she warns. “Just because you liked pairing up all your Barbies with Kens and GI Joes when you were little doesn’t mean you can do that with real people. You know there’s nothing between Gav and me. He’s like my brother.”
“Most people don’t make out with their brothers.”
She glares at me. “That only happened once and I was twelve at the time, so it doesn’t count. Besides, the whole thing was instructional. I needed to know how to French kiss.
Gav had experience in that area. Ipso facto he was the logical person to ask for a lesson.”
“Seems like someone who has several degrees in math should be better with addition. You and Gav made out twice.” I hold up two fingers and wiggle them in her face. “Or are you forgetting about your Seven Minutes in Heaven with him at Lucy Richardson’s Sweet Sixteen party?”
“You don’t know what happened in that closet,” Sloane says, avoiding my gaze. “Gav and I might have been playing Rock Paper Scissors or discussing the plot points of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”
“Sure,” I retort. “That’s why you weren’t wearing your bra when the two of you came out of the closet.”
“You couldn’t remember to pay your cell phone bill last month, even though I set up an account for you to do it online, but you have perfect clarity about a trivial event that occurred sixteen years ago and didn’t even affect you directly?” She heaves an exasperated sigh. “All right, fine, Gav might have felt me up one time. So what? I was a horny teenager who would have let anyone with a pulse and boy parts grope me. Why are we even talking about this? I thought you wanted to know about Josh? Is that quiche ready yet?”
Interesting. She’s so desperate to get off the subject of Gav that she’s now willing to discuss the previously forbidden topic of Josh? I’ll have to take full advantage of this! “Yeah, it’s ready.” I pull a knife and a spatula out of the drawer to the left of the stove. “Why don’t we eat out back since it’s such a nice evening, and you can give me the scoop on your new man? How long have you been seeing him? What’s he like? Can I meet him?” I pepper her with questions while carving up the pie.
“We’ve been hooking up for about a year. He’s smart, ambitious, and good in bed.
And no, you can’t meet him because it’s not that kind of relationship. We aren’t a couple, so we don’t do all that stupid couple-y stuff like introduce each other to our families, or brunch with friends and go shopping for loveseats at IKEA on the weekends.” She grimaces at the thought of such horrors, but it all sounds really nice to me. In fact, I can’t imagine anything better than having a boyfriend whose idea of the perfect Sunday was sharing some Eggs Benedict, then browsing through a furniture store hand-in-hand for hours.
“Um, okay . . . so, you’re not dating, but there has to be more to your relationship than sex, right?”
“Not really.” She holds out some red plastic plates that are leftovers from last 4th of July when we had a cookout over at Gav’s, and I plop a piece of quiche down on each. “I mean, we do have work in common and we spend a lot of time together there.”
“He works with you at Ashby, Terhune, and McAllister?”
“Yeah, sure, you’ve heard me mention him before. Josh Finley, my team leader, my Senior Manager.”
“Your boss?!” I drop the forks I was collecting, and they land with a clatter back in the silverware tray.
“And now you’re scandalized.”
“No, I’m not.” I totally am. “I’m just concerned and . . . and surprised. I know how much you value your work and your position at ATM. Why would you jeopardize it all by sleeping with your supervisor? Unless you’re in love with him?” There’s a hopeful lilt in my voice.
“Love?” She guffaws. “Pull your head out of the clouds, Willa. This isn’t one of your romance novels. It’s two consenting adults who like to heat up the sheets once in a while, with no strings attached. My sexy times with Josh don’t interfere with our work and no one at ATM has a clue what’s going on between us.”
“Still seems risky,” I comment as I top off our lemonade.
“And that’s what keeps things hot.” Sloane gives me a saucy wink and a smile, then takes her lemonade and heads for the double doors that lead out to the back porch.
Cicero rouses from his nap on the kitchen rug and follows her, because his nose tells him that she has food. I bring up the rear, and the three of us trek across the porch and down the flight of stairs that leads us to the Victorian’s small back yard, where there are two old Adirondack chairs waiting for us.
We’re setting our cups and plates down on the little table wedged between the two chairs when something catches my eye and I gasp, “Sloane! What happened to Lovey’s roses?” My dinner forgotten, I rush over to the garden my grandmother planted when our mom was little.
Whenever I think of Lovey, the first image that pops into my head is her tending to these rose bushes, wearing her multi-colored, striped gardening hat with the pink bow on the back. That hat was so bright, silly, and fun; it always made me smile. And Lovey’s roses always made her smile. Spring was her favorite time of year, because that’s when her much-cherished roses would bloom and the yard would be transformed into something awe-inspiring with the vibrant colors and fragrant aroma of these buds. It’s almost June now, and the roses should be at the height of their beauty, instead they’re drooping and the ground is littered with their petals. When I get closer to the flowers, I can see that their leaves are covered with white webbing, which means they’re infested with some kind of pest, or maybe a fungus.
“Sloane!” I shout at her because she never answered my question, and she seems more interested in wolfing down the quiche than in the destruction of our family’s floral legacy.
“I don’t know. That gardener who’s been taking care of the roses since Mom moved to New Mexico flaked out on me this year. I tried calling him, but his number’s been disconnected.”
“Have you been watering the flowers? Feeding them?”
“When do I have time to do that? You now I’m always at work.” She walks over to me, still holding her plate and shoveling down the quiche. Guess she didn’t mind the spinach so much, after all. “Ew,” she says when she sees what shape the roses are in. “What’s with all that webby gunk? Are spiders nesting in the roses?”
“No clue, but there are clearly some serious issues here. These roses should be in full bloom right now, but look at how the petals are brown around the edges and they’re falling off. Cicero!” I whip my head to the side to see what he’s up to because I suddenly have the strong sensation that he’s plotting something. Sure enough, he’s got his paws up on the table where my dinner is sitting. His nose is mere inches from the edge of the plate. “Behave yourself and I’ll share some of my quiche with you in a minute,” I tell him, and
he stands down.
“These roses look like a lost cause to me. I’ll have to hire someone to come and remove the bushes.” Sloane takes another bite of quiche. “Mmmmm, this crust is fantastic. Is it store-bought or did you make it from scratch?”
“No!” I protest violently, and she gives me the same “Have you flipped?” look that she did the first time I told her I could understand what was going on in animals’ heads. “Sorry, yes, the crust is store-bought. I told Gav’s housekeeper to get me Pillsbury’s when she went to Safeway, but she couldn’t find it. So, she got Marie Callander’s. I was worried that the frozen wouldn’t taste as good as the refrigerated because – oh, never mind! What I was saying ‘no’ to was you having Lovey’s rose bushes carted off like they were trash. You can’t do that! These roses have been here since before we were born. You know how much Lovey cared about them. She put her heart and soul into this garden and she expected us to keep the roses healthy and alive after she was gone.” I’m so emotional that my voice cracks on the last word.
“Oh, geez, don’t cry,” Sloane orders, just like when we were kids. She’s never been able to abide tears, which is why I’ve often found turning on the waterworks to be a very effective tool in getting her to do what I want. “If it’s that important to you, I suppose we can try and save the damn roses. And by ‘we,’ I mean, you, because I do not have the time to deal with this right now. I just got a new, high profile client who may be my ticket to a promotion, so I need to give her case my full attention.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” I crush Sloane to my chest in an appreciative embrace, which she awkwardly returns with her one free hand. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, Sloane, I swear. I will have these roses restored to their former glory in no time.” Not that I have any idea where to begin with this rehabilitative process since I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s green thumb. I have to replace the one plant in my apartment (a fern) every few months because it keeps croaking on me. “I should probably do some online research into these weird symptoms they’re displaying so that I’ll know what the right course of action is. Wonder if there’s a site like WebMD for flowers?”
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