Miss Janie’s Girls

by Brown, Carolyn

“You lie all the time, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Teresa answered.

  “I see you haven’t changed any.” Kayla passed by her on her way to put her clothing into the dryer and start another load. “You’re still as big a smart-ass as ever. Got any more of that pie?”

  “Nope.” Teresa shoved the last bite into her mouth and answered around it. “But there’s chocolate cake over there.” She pointed toward a domed cake plate.

  “Did you make it?” Kayla glanced over at the cabinet.

  “Yep, I did, but I promise I didn’t poison your part of the food,” Teresa answered.

  “I wouldn’t put it past you, but since Sam ate some and he didn’t fall over on the floor with froth coming out of his mouth, I’ll take a chance,” Kayla told her.

  “I wouldn’t poison you.” Teresa poured herself a glass of lemonade but didn’t offer Kayla any. “It would be a waste of good food.”

  Noah came into the kitchen and cut himself a slice of cake and got the milk jug from the refrigerator. When he reached for a glass, he turned toward Kayla. “Should I pour some for you?”

  “Yes, please, and thank you.” Kayla smiled.

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Teresa said. “You lived here as many years as I did. You know where things are, and you can wait on yourself.”

  “I already figured that out.” Kayla could hear the coldness of her own voice. “But you don’t have to be such a”—she stopped and grinned—“such an old witch about it.”

  “You almost made a mistake there,” Teresa said.

  “What’d she do?” Noah asked.

  “I called her a bitch one time, and she tried to shake my teeth out of my head.” Kayla cut herself a piece of cake. “She’s mean as a rattlesnake, and that word sets her off, so be careful not to call her that. I also remember that you didn’t finish college, so what did you become?”

  “I married a man who said we needed two incomes. I worked at a nursing home and got my nursing aide’s certificate by going to night school. Never had the money to get the nursing degree I wanted. How about you?” Teresa answered.

  “Why, I was the personal aide to the president’s wife in the White House,” Kayla smarted off. “What do you think I did? I lived in a travel trailer most of the time with Denver. He was as worthless as the last sheet of toilet paper on the roll. I supported us by doing waitress work. I’m not perfect like you.” Kayla’s tone was pure sarcasm.

  “One twin is always the good one. Least I went back to school,” Teresa smarted off right back at her.

  Kayla ducked her chin and glared at Teresa. “Don’t you know? I’m the twin that gets to have all the fun.”

  “Were y’all this hateful to each other when you were here?” Noah asked.

  “We lived together in this house, and I can count the times we were friends on one hand. I was the poor little half-black girl with the kinky hair like my father and green eyes and freckles like my white mother. Teresa was the pretty Mexican girl with good hair and the cute figure,” Kayla said.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” Teresa scolded.

  “Well, evidently y’all haven’t kept in touch since you left. Didn’t you ever wonder about each other?” Noah asked.

  “I didn’t have anything to say to her,” Kayla answered. “And maybe we did act like sisters. Haven’t you ever heard of sibling rivalry?”

  “Yes, I have, and I’ve seen it before,” Noah replied, “but I believe I’m seeing it in Technicolor right now.”

  “Well, I sent Miss Janie a Christmas card every year, and I usually wrote her a letter on her birthday in March,” Teresa said, and then turned to face Kayla. “Did you remember to do that?”

  “Nope,” Kayla said. “Don’t judge me. I barely made enough money to pay the bills. I didn’t have money for things like cards, and I hate to write letters.”

  “What did Denver do?” Noah asked.

  “He couldn’t hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time, and whatever money he made went to buy pot for him and his buddies. Go ahead and tell me you’re not surprised.” Kayla shot another dirty look toward her foster sister.

  “I married at nineteen and divorced last year,” Teresa said. “I can’t judge you. My husband couldn’t keep his pants zipped around other women. I stuck with him until he left me for a woman that had two kids by him already, so it’s only a matter of which one of us has been the biggest fool,” she said. “I’m going to get Miss Janie ready for bed before I go upstairs.”

  “If you’re taking care of her, then what’s my job?” Kayla asked.

  “As Miss Janie gets more and more feeble, it’ll take both of you to care for her,” Noah answered. “I’m going to leave it up to you to work out a schedule about the cooking and care.”

  “What about housecleaning?” Kayla asked.

  “We have a lady to come in and do that.” Noah cut himself another slice of chocolate cake.

  “I can take over that part,” Kayla offered. “I’ve been working for a bitchy old girl the past six months, taking care of her fancy house. I’ll be glad to keep this one clean.”

  “All right then.” Noah started out of the room. “I’ll call the cleaning service from Sulphur Springs and tell them we won’t need them anymore. I write paychecks on Friday. Do you need an advance until then?”

  “No, I’m good. Is Teresa gettin’ paid?” Kayla asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Teresa answered.

  “Don’t you feel guilty taking money from someone who did so much for both of us?” Kayla asked.

  “She’s left y’all a bit of an inheritance,” Noah said. “Consider your payment for this work as part of that.”

  Kayla was shocked to even think that Miss Janie would leave her something after the way she had treated her foster mother—leaving in the middle of the night with nothing but a few lines written on a piece of notebook paper and put under the sugar bowl on the table.

  Teresa checked on Miss Janie one more time on her way upstairs that evening. She was sound asleep and looked more peaceful than she had since Teresa had arrived, but then she had her babies at home with her. Now she could skip over the line separating the living from those who were already in eternity.

  Teresa’s shoes felt as if they were weighted with lead as she climbed the stairs. She hadn’t wanted to be paid to take care of Miss Janie, but Noah had insisted when he’d written her paycheck. Teresa’s heaviness of body and soul had nothing to do with losing her job but with knowing that she didn’t deserve any kind of inheritance from Miss Janie.

  She hadn’t opened her box of memories in a while, but that evening something kept nagging at her to get it down from the closet shelf. Maybe it was Kayla’s return. She took down the box, set it on the bed, and removed the contents one by one. First was the only picture she had of her with her mother. Angelina, or Angel, as she insisted that Teresa call her. Angel had a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other and had struck a sexy pose. Teresa was sitting on the other side of the porch steps leading into the trailer. In the background, one of the many guys who came and went was standing in the doorway bare-bellied. He held up his middle finger to whoever was taking the picture. The man looked a helluva lot like Luis, Teresa’s ex-husband, but the picture had been taken twenty years ago. Maybe the stance or the crude gesture was what reminded her of him, and not so much the facial features.

  She laid the picture aside and brought out a faded pink satin ribbon. Angel had tied that around Teresa’s hair when she enrolled her in kindergarten. That was the last day Teresa had ever felt pretty.

  “What’s that all about?” Kayla asked from the doorway.

  Kayla’s voice startled Teresa so badly that she felt an adrenaline rush. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “I didn’t,” Kayla said. “I came up the stairs, went to the bathroom, and saw you standing near the bed like a statue. Where did you get all that stuff anyway?”

  “It’s personal stuff that I’ve kep
t.” She put the ribbon and the picture back in the box.

  “I didn’t ever have much worth keeping, but I did keep a notebook that Miss Janie gave me to write down my thoughts.” Kayla shrugged. “But then you—”

  Teresa put up a palm. “Don’t start that crap about me havin’ a better life than you. We all had our burdens to carry, and mine wasn’t a bit lighter than yours.”

  “You don’t know everything about my life.” Kayla took a step into the bedroom.

  “And you don’t know much of anything about mine,” Teresa told her. “But we need to get along as best we can for Miss Janie’s sake now.”

  “As long as you don’t try to lord it over me, I’ll give it a try,” Kayla said.

  “If you don’t knock that chip off your shoulder soon, I’m going to really do it for you,” Teresa threatened.

  Kayla gave her foster sister the evil eye. “Bring it on, big girl.”

  Teresa sat down in the rocking chair. “Girl, you ain’t had it a bit worse than I have. Luis refused to let me continue in college. He said that it took two people to make a living, and I could hustle my butt out there and find a job. When I came home and told him I’d gotten a job cleaning at the nursing home but I had to work the three-to-eleven shifts, he didn’t even care about that. But then why should he? That gave him time to come home from his day job, clean up, and go out with his buddies to drink beer and chase other women. So don’t go pouting thinkin’ you had it so rough.”

  “At least Luis worked.” Kayla sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Denver was a spoiled brat,” Teresa said. “I never could see why you were attracted to him.”

  “He told me I was pretty,” Kayla whispered. “And we had sex when I was fifteen. After that, he was kind of nice to me at school. It’s not easy to never fit in anywhere. Denver gave me a place, even if I was only on the fringes.”

  “Miss Janie didn’t let us date until we were sixteen,” Teresa said. “And what do you mean by kind of nice?”

  “As long as I was his booty call, he let me hang out with him and our friends, and he was so mean that no one dared bully me after that.” Kayla kept her eyes on the memory box and didn’t look at Teresa. “His folks kicked him out about that time, and he lived with some of his worthless friends until we graduated. The rest is history. We were going to set the world on fire. He had a car, and I had a few dollars saved from my allowance.”

  “Then you found out that it took more than that to blaze a trail in the world, right?” Teresa agreed. “Luis and I were going to live in a mansion by the time we were married ten years. We were going to have a family, and everything was going to be perfect.”

  “You got it.” Kayla almost smiled. “But guess what? Perfect ain’t anything but a pipe dream. Why didn’t y’all have kids?”

  “I’d gotten on the pill when I went to college, and after his first affair, I didn’t miss a single one. I even set an alarm on my phone to remind me that it was time to take it,” Teresa replied. “How about you?”

  “He said if I got pregnant, then I could figure out how to pay for an abortion. He didn’t want snotty-nosed kids—his words, not mine—running around his feet. I didn’t have a phone, but I took that pill faithfully at eight o’clock every evening when I got home from work. Thank God the health clinic provided them free.” Kayla shivered.

  “Real bastards that we got, weren’t they?” Teresa said.

  “Apples don’t fall far from the tree, and we kind of proved it, didn’t we?” Kayla stood up.

  “I was thinkin’ more that the guys we took up with did that.” Teresa could hardly believe that they were talking civil to each other after the way they’d slung words around earlier.

  “Think about it. We’re damaged goods. Our folks didn’t want us. Most foster homes wouldn’t have taken us in as old as we were. Miss Janie was kind enough to realize we needed a stable home, but we were way past what those counselors call our formative years,” Kayla told her. “My folks moved off and left me. You got taken out of your home because your stepdad was beating on you and your mama.”

  “Our judgment ain’t too good, is it?” Teresa followed Kayla out into the hallway. “But we’ve both got a fresh chance right now. Let’s make the most of it.”

  “We’ll see,” Kayla said. “We are who we are for the most part. As for me, I don’t intend to ever trust another man.”

  “Me, either,” Teresa said.

  Kayla started toward the stairs and turned around. “Good talk, but don’t go thinkin’ you’re my real sister or that you can tell me what to do.”

  “Right back at you.” Teresa closed the door to her room, sat down on the floor, drew up her knees, and rested her chin on them. She’d said that she could never trust another man, but there was something still unresolved between her and Noah. She could tell by his expressions that he could feel it, too. She might put her faith in him, but she had so much baggage in her past that even if they did admit the attraction, she’d probably end up like Kayla—just a booty call.

  No, it was far better that she simply resisted all those emotions she felt when he was around. Shove them into the dark corners of her heart and never let them see the light of day. Banter with him like she’d been doing and then get on with life after Miss Janie was gone. Until then, she had her work cut out for her.

  A sharp knock on her door startled her for the second time that day. Expecting it to be Kayla, she yelled, “Come on in.”

  Noah slung the door open, and from her angle on the floor, his silhouette filled the doorway and blocked out the light. His broad chest looked like it was at least an acre wide and narrowed down perfectly to his hips. He wore cowboy boots and snug jeans, and his hair was shoved up under a black felt cowboy hat. She’d never seen him dressed like that, but the look was downright sexy. He took a step inside and flashed a brilliant smile.

  “Do you think you and Kayla could hold down the fort for a few days?” he asked. “I’ve got a case over around Texarkana. I’ll leave some money for y’all for anything you might need while I’m gone and my cell number in case you need me.”

  “We’ll manage,” Teresa said. “I’m settled in pretty good right now, and it looks like Kayla is here for the long haul, so go on. When are you leaving?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning. I should be gone Monday through Wednesday if everything goes well,” he answered.

  “Well, you sure look like you’ll do just fine,” she told him.

  The three of them were adjusting better than she thought they might. She was enjoying doing the cooking and spending time with Miss Janie. Kayla had offered to help with the cleaning duties and with Miss Janie when Teresa needed her. And now Noah trusted them enough to go away for a few days on a job.

  “Thanks for doing this. I’ve had to turn down some work since I got here because of this situation, and it’s tough on the reputation. I get a lot of my work by word of mouth,” he said.

  “No problem,” she assured him. “So, you’ll be back Wednesday?”

  “Hopefully, but Thursday at the latest,” he said as he started down the stairs.

  “Safe travels,” she called out.

  “Thank you.” Noah waved back.

  “Out of sight, out of mind,” she muttered, but she didn’t believe a single word.

  Chapter Seven

  Noah propped a pillow against the headboard of the bed in a cheap hotel on the outskirts of Texarkana. Ever since he moved from Houston to Birthright, he’d had second thoughts about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He’d gotten scholarships to go to college, but he’d still had a lot of money tied up in student loans. He had found out right fast that eighty-hour weeks and all that stress weren’t what he imagined his job would be, but he was stuck with the only real skill he had until his good friend Daniel Freeman, who had gone to law school with him, had quit and joined his father’s private investigator firm. That sounded like a fantastic idea to Noah, so when Daniel offered him
a position, he jumped on it. He put in the hours and passed the test to be a PI, and after a year of working with the Freeman Firm, he’d left the company to start his own practice.

  He picked up the mystery book he’d brought along and began to read. The story was about a PI who was always bumbling things up. So far, he’d never made any of the mistakes the character in the book had made, but after a year of this business, he was doubting it was for him after all. Sitting in a motel, waiting for dark so he could hit a couple of bars, when he’d rather be in Birthright—well, he had a lot of decisions to make by Christmas.

  He hit the first bar at ten o’clock, sat on a stool at the far end of the counter, and sipped on a nonalcoholic beer until the right man came inside. The guy slid into a booth in a dark corner and ordered two beers. By the time the waitress delivered them, a woman had joined him on the same side of the booth. Noah positioned his phone so he could get several pictures of them kissing.

  That woman looks younger than his daughter, Noah thought as he pulled up the family picture the man’s wife had given him.

  It’s not your job to judge, that pesky voice inside his head reminded him. You are here to verify that he’s having an affair, deliver the evidence, and be on your way.

  “But I don’t like being a part of breaking up homes,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” the bartender, a cute little blonde who couldn’t be a day over twenty-one, asked.

  “Sorry, I was talkin’ to myself.” Noah laid out a bill on the counter and carried his beer to the booth right behind the couple.

  He turned on the recorder on his phone and decided they were, beyond a doubt, the stupidest couple he had ever surveilled. Even in the noise of the bar, he could hear them loud and clear.

  “You’ll tell her tonight when you go home,” she said.

  “If she’s asleep, I’ll do it in the morning before I go to work. By this time tomorrow night, we won’t have to hide things any longer. I love you, Chrissy.”

  “Oh, Marcus, I love you, too.”

  More kissing and then Marcus said, “Let’s leave these beers behind and go celebrate in our room.”