by Annie Jones
Kate held her breath. She hadn’t intended to hold her breath. But her mother had that kind of effect on her—causing her to do all sorts of things she had never had any intentions of doing.
And with that thought, she exhaled in a whoosh that made her shoulders sag and blew her bangs upward. Before they could land in a brown fringe over her eyes again, her mother concluded her sentence.
“You’re just discerning.”
“You mean too picky for my own good.” Kate nodded.
“Both you girls are…”
Too picky for your own good. It hung in the air between them like another piece of the family’s dirty laundry they tried so hard to ignore.
“…discerning,” Dodie finished as she exhaled, looking adoring but glum. “I suppose I have only myself to blame.”
Kate put her hand on her mother’s leg. “No, Mom, I’ve never…”
Dodie reached out and placed her ruddy palm on Kate’s cheek. “Your father may have only loaded the baby into his brand-new overpriced pickup truck and driven off that awful night but he took a part of all of us with him.”
Kate turned her back. It was the closest thing she could do to bolting for the door. She took her mother’s foot in one hand as if she wanted to begin an exam. Actually, she just thought it was a good way to keep Dodie from kicking her aside and bolting as well when Kate said what she had planned to say. “But you took care of us then, Mom.”
“I did.”
Deep breath. She considered grabbing her mother’s other foot, maybe throwing in a leg lock. Instead, she stood straight and turned. She’d promised Jo she’d do this and she would do it. This time she could not run. “And now it’s our turn to take care of you.”
“Oh, no.” Dodie shook her feet free and slid off the table. She nabbed her shoes and headed for the door without even putting them on.
Kate couldn’t run, but Dodie could.
Right out the examining-room door.
“No?” Kate stood in the doorway and called out, “You haven’t even heard what I have to say.”
“I don’t have to hear.” As Kate’s lone assistant for the slow workday stared with her mouth open, Dodie’s feet plopped softly over the stiff brown carpet of the outer office. She did not pause to put her shoes on, not even when she got to the main door. “I know what’s coming. You think this same kind of thing hasn’t happened to my friends? I should have recognized the signs. Getting me on your turf, taking away my shoes…”
“Mom, I’m a professional. I’m a podiatrist.” Not that anyone would know it from the pitiful lack of patients around here. She glanced around the room, then called after her mother again, “You had an appointment.”
“Yes, but you had another objective.” She had jammed her hand down into her shoe so she could stab the pointed toe of the pump in her right hand. “And I want no part of it. I’m not some delicate old woman who needs looking after by her children.”
“You just said you were frail.”
She flung the door open, almost lost the shoe in her left hand, caught it and stuffed it, quite haphazardly, into her open purse. “You just said I was a nut.”
And as if to disprove that notion to anyone within earshot, Dodie hustled out the door and into the hallway of the medical-arts building with her head high, one shoe poking out of her purse and the other firmly placed on her hand.
“No, Mom, I didn’t.” Kate followed as far as the door. “That was a joke. That was us just kidding around.”
“Behind every joke is a kernel of…” She stopped, opened her mouth, then smiled. She yanked the shoe from her purse, fit it to her other hand and clapped both soles together like a pair of triumphant cymbals. “Kernels! That’s what’s in popcorn, isn’t it?”
“See, Mom. You cannot focus. You go from one thing to another without thinking it through. One minute you’re leaving in a huff, the next you’re in this public hallway waving around those awful shoes that you will never be able to cram your feet back into.”
Dodie frowned at the shoes.
When she did not try to prove Kate wrong by throwing the navy pumps down on the floor and beginning to shove her swollen tootsies back into them, Kate could tell her mother had taken the point to heart. She might not want to hear what needed to be said, but she was listening. So Kate pushed on. “Besides, you’re going to slip in those stockings. Probably fall and break a hip. And then what?”
Dodie put her hand, uh, heel, on her hip, her penciled-on eyebrows furrowed over her worried gaze.
“You have no home of your own to go to and your lady friends are not capable of taking care of you when you’re healthy much less when you need real care.” Kate had not met these women, but she assumed they must be like her mother. And though she loved her with all her heart, the last person Kate would want hovering over her when she was seriously ill or in pain was her mother. “You haven’t thought this through, just like you didn’t think through selling your condo. Things like that are what have Jo and I…”
“Jo and you…?” Dodie mimicked the way Kate’s voice trailed off then her face lit up. “Oh! That’s right, I’m fleeing! I’m flying for my life.”
“Fleeing? Really, Mom.” Kate watched her mother now switch to careful baby steps.
“Remember when you and your sister used to put on your father’s old gym socks and skate on the hardwood floors?” she asked, making almost no progress at all heading for the large glass front doors.
Kate had insisted her office be on the ground floor, to better accommodate patients with aching feet. Little had she known she’d get the most benefit from that when trying to just do something sensible for her own mother. “Mom, this is hardly the time to—”
“Oh, that’s right. That’s right. Fleeing. Oh, and skating!” She put her weight into it and went gliding along the hallway. “Hey! The old girl has still got it! Try to catch me now Scat-Kat-Katie!”
“Mom, this isn’t helping….”
And she hit the door.
Literally.
Went sailing right into it with a big thud. It knocked one of the pumps off her hands. That did not slow her down.
In fact, it just freed her up to open the door and rush headlong out into the bright afternoon sun, leaving a lone bargain pump lying on the floor à la Cinderella making her getaway.
If only Dodie’s land yacht of a car would simply turn into a pumpkin. That would solve some of Kate’s problems.
Oh, her mom would still try to drive it, of course, but people would be more apt to get out of her way.
Unfortunately for Kate, she didn’t have sense enough to do just that.
“Mom, come back inside.”
The driver’s side door slammed. “Can’t dear. I have someplace I have to go.”
“Where?” Scat-Kat-Kate pushed aside her usual response to retreat and charged forward.
“Dream Away Bay Court!”
“Dream Away…” Kate knew that name. Wasn’t it from a fairy tale or something? “What are you talking about, Mom?”
“Florida, darling. My friends and I are headed to our old vacation cottage in Santa Sofia.” Dodie rammed the key into the ignition.
“Santa Sofia.” The name tingled on Kate’s lips. Or maybe that was the memory of the last kiss she’d shared with Vince in that very place.
The engine roared to a start.
“Mom, you can’t be serious. We haven’t used that place for like…sixteen years.” They had a caretaker who, up until the last year or so, had kept it rented and they supposed in decent repair, but who knew? “Mom, stop. Think this over. Jo and I think you should come and live with one of us.”
“Well, I think you should come and live with me. Nothing keeping you here. You want me as a roomie? You’ll know where to find me.” Dodie gave her a grin, a wave, and not one other bit of warning before she jerked the car into Reverse and hit the gas.
And her tire hit Kate’s foot.
The wet snap of bones breaking got to Kat
e long before the actual pain.
Crunch.
Grind.
Squish.
Or maybe the squish came first.
On that, Kate could not be one-hundred-percent sure, what with her legs buckling, the agony overtaking her and her mind swerving randomly between a doctor’s cool objectivity and a daughter’s hot-headed frustration.
Neither lasted long.
Kate was down…but in a moment of realization that could only happen in her family, she knew she wasn’t out.
Dodie had been stopped.
Kate had not run and for once she had succeeded, if only temporarily.
And as she faded into unconsciousness, she did so with a smile.
Chapter Two
Being perfect was not as satisfying as some people would have you believe. In fact, hotshot Realtor, Jo Cromwell, found it positively exhausting.
From the moment her sounds-of-nature alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. until she switched off her laptop and the satellite TV news mix—which allowed her to follow news, weather and financial reports on six channels simultaneously—at midnight, Jo’s life was just one long list of putting out fires, putting plans into action and putting her best foot forward.
And every day she hated it more and more.
She hated the life she had created for herself.
She hated her unquenchable drive to push harder, climb higher.
She hated her desperate need to feel she had finally arrived by achieving more, by getting more, by being more. And she hated to admit that every day she failed.
Then every new morning she got up and tried to do it all over again. She couldn’t seem to help herself. Every day. Day after day. Year upon year.
Exhausting? To say the least.
And expensive.
The shoe aspect alone was a nightmare. Not only did it take a small fortune to keep shod in the latest trend, but the older she got the more she came to realize that the cuter the shoes, the more punishment they handed out to her feet. Her fat feet. Her mother’s feet.
No designer names, expensive styles and accessories, not even an “awww” factor of “I’ll skip lunch for a week to pay for these” times two in cuteness could change that.
“Thanks, Mom,” she muttered.
“Hmm?” her passenger asked.
“Nothing.” Jo gunned the engine and her car jumped forward a few feet, gaining her absolutely no real ground in the stifling Atlanta traffic.
Thanks, Mom, her mind echoed. Thanks for the fat feet, the weak ankles, the thin hair and the tendency to look like an hourglass with the sands of time drifting southward more and more each year.
“Green light! See it?”
And thanks, ever so much, for my sister Kate and for your latest means of allowing us to…be sweet…to each other. Jo gritted her teeth and eased her car forward.
Kate did not have to do anything to appear perfect.
Kate had traveled. Kate had sought and mastered a series of interesting and eclectic jobs. If that wasn’t enough, at a time when other people might have been thinking of settling down, she up and went to medical school, became a doctor and now had opened her own practice.
Kate was the real deal. From her thick, gorgeous hair to her lean, athletic build, to her adorable little toes. Well, adorable up until a few days ago.
Jo shuddered. Her breath caught in her chest. She gripped the steering wheel and pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building with the chichi Atlanta address. She stole a peek at her sister in the seat next to her, now sitting serenely with her eyes closed.
“Perfect,” she whispered before cutting the engine and plastering on a big smile. “We’re here. Now sit tight and wait for me to come around and help you—”
Clunk. The passenger door of Jo’s darling electric-blue PT Cruiser popped open.
“Kate!”
“I don’t need any help. If I can just get myself upright, I can propel myself forward, get out and…”
“Fall on your face?” Jo clucked her tongue in good humor. How often did she get to play the rescuer role with Kate? She was going to savor every minute. She tugged on the hem of Kate’s shirt to counterbalance the sudden forward pitch of her trying to climb out of the car on her own.
Ooomph. Kate came back down into the seat, her cheeks red and beads of sweat on her forehead.
“Stay put.”
“You just stay out of my way,” Kate joked, even though she looked as though she was about to be sick.
Jo shot out of the car, whomping her door shut with such force that it made the magnetic sign proclaiming Paul Powers Realty: The Powerhouse of Home Sellers slide down a full inch on one side. One day that sign would tout her name, represent her success. One day, Jo thought as she gritted her teeth and decided to leave the sign hanging lopsided, she would show Paul Powers she was not a girl to be toyed with. She would finally be somebody.
That was all she wanted. All she had ever wanted. To be somebody.
If Jo ever decided to have her own sign with a simple maxim to promote herself to the world it would be something eloquent yet energetic. Understated, yet it would speak volumes. It would evoke her style, her initiative, her…
Oh, who was she kidding? Jo didn’t need a sign to proclaim to the world her fondest desire. It could be summed up in six words. Pick me. Pick me. Pick me.
An ideal sentiment for the kid who’d felt perpetually unwanted. Their father had chosen the youngest of the girls to take with him when he’d broken up the family. Mom had always leaned on Kate. But Jo?
Jo had gone into real estate and excelled at it because, in the end, she understood it. Every day all day she spent her time getting people to choose her. Then she took something that had been cast off and made someone want it, turned it into a complete must-have. Just like her.
In her line of work, Jo was the must-have agent. And she still felt unwanted, especially by her sister right now.
“This fierce independent act of yours may dazzle the corn-and-bunion set but I warn you it’s about to trod on my very last nerve!” The springy curls of Jo’s pale blond hair extensions bounced against the resolute stiffness of her shoulders in her eye-catching red suit jacket. “Just let me help you for once without it degenerating into a contest of wills.”
In three long strides Jo had come around to her sister’s side of the car and put her foot down.
In response, Kate put her cane down.
Jo narrowed her eyes on the spot just a hairbreadth away from her toe where the tip of Kate’s cane rested on the blacktop of the parking lot. “These are three-hundred-dollar hand-crafted Italian sling backs!”
“Three hundred dollars for a pair of high-heeled toe crunchers? Where are your priorities?” Kate rolled her eyes.
“My priorities are just where they should be, thank you. If they weren’t I’d have left you in that hospital at the mercy of every nurse and aide that you so enchanted with your constant demands to be released.”
“I can’t stand being confined. I have work waiting. A business to run…” Kate drew in her breath, but her face gave no hint if she was in physical pain or had just remembered that she had decided to close her office while she recovered from the accident. Maybe to never open it again.
“As do I. And yet here I am.” Jo planted her foot on the edge of the open door, both to make her point and to block her sister from lurching up and out of the car and doing further damage to herself. “And I’m not going anywhere as long as you need me.”
Kate glanced down. Her cane scraped softly along the ground in a gesture that suggested humility, like a shy child scuffing his toe in the dirt.
“Don’t worry, you can thank me later,” Jo murmured.
“Thank you? I was going to trip you so I could make my big break for it.” Kate laughed without looking up, then bounced the tip of her cane on the ground a couple times. “Three hundred dollars! For three hundred dollars I would have carried you piggyback through the streets of Atlanta, baby
sister.”
“Big talk from someone who can’t even bear her own weight right now.” Jo reached out to snatch away the barley twist mahogany walking stick with the brass cat’s head handle. “And by the way, I scoured practically every thrift shop and antique store in Atlanta to find this cane for you. I’ll thank you to be more ladylike with it.”
“Ladylike?” Kate snorted. “Since when have either of us put any kind of a price on being considered ladylike?”
“Then just be a little less donkey-like with it, if you don’t mind.”
“But I do mind, Jo. I mind that my foot is in a cast and I am in a pickle when I was only trying to do a good deed. I mind that because of this, because of me, Mom now feels just awful and now neither of us can take care of her. Not to mention having to rely on you, my baby sister, who should be the one to count on me.”
“If I needed to count on something I’d buy a calculator. Or an abacus. Or wear open-toed shoes. I certainly wouldn’t turn to you.” She meant it as a challenge. The kind of joke meant to goad Kate back into acting like her old feisty self. But it didn’t come off that way and Jo knew why. “That isn’t to say people can’t depend on you. In fact, you’re the most dependable…”
“No. That’s okay. You’d be wise not to depend on me. On ol’ Scat-Kat-Katie.”
Jo thought about putting her arms around her sister, leaning her head to Kate’s and…
And what?
Telling her for the umpteenth time that there was nothing Kate could have done to keep their father from abducting their younger sister? Jo simply could not bear to bring that up, not in the first moments of the first evening of the first time she had ever had the chance to be the caregiver. The helper. The…Kate.
“It’s sisterhood. It’s not a competition,” their mother often told them, usually on the heels of having heaped praise on Kate for some superhuman feat. Opening an olive jar, for example.
Competition or not, today, Jo was the good daughter. Jo was the hero. The star. Jo was on top.
It had taken Kate nearly being crippled for Jo to get on top but she wasn’t going to nitpick about the process now. And she wasn’t going to dredge up a lifetime of old hurts.