by Jayne Denker
Nate grunted. “You’d think George would have come for a visit when she was first born.”
“Maybe she’s too much of a hotshot over in Boston, didn’t have time to come back for a visit before now.”
“Not even to see her only niece? Heck, she couldn’t even be bothered to show up for her own sister’s wedding.”
“You don’t think she . . . you know . . . disapproves or anything, do you?”
“What, about Sera and Jaz? Nah, doesn’t seem like her. She was always a good girl. A little rough around the edges, but decent.”
Inexplicably agitated at their deconstruction of Georgiana Down, Casey interrupted with, “Everything’s all right with the girls, isn’t it?” In Marsden, “the girls” was shorthand for Sera, Jaz, and Amelia. Now it would probably be amended to mean Sera, Jaz, Amelia, and George. Casey’s stomach surged a bit at this. “I mean, besides Jaz’s back problem.”
“Haven’t heard anything to the contrary,” Nate said.
Casey hadn’t either, but suddenly checking on them jumped to the top of his mental “to do” list, as though there weren’t a hundred other items vying for the top spot.
Nate hitched up his khakis again. “I’ve gotta get back to the office. Thanks for lunch, Case. You heading back to the farm?”
The younger man nodded. Those other things on his list were far more pressing than finding an excuse to visit the Down homestead. And, if he were honest with himself, he’d have admitted he was a bit hesitant to show up on George’s doorstep after all these years.
So he said, “Yeah, better get going myself. I’ll see you.”
Waving at Nate, who went up the block to the office, Casey glanced up and down Main Street and jaywalked to get to his truck. Someone was keeping pace with him; he glanced over and saw Elliot jogging alongside.
“Something I can do for you?” Casey muttered.
“Uh, you drove me?”
Casey winced and shook his head as he reached for the door handle of his F-250. “Right. Sorry.”
Elliot studied him as he rounded the truck to climb into the passenger seat. “You okay there, Case? Nora’s meatloaf not sitting right with you or something?”
“That must be it. Touch of heartburn.”
Yeah, he’d call it that.
Chapter 4
“You look like a homeless person.”
“Gee, thanks. Maybe that’s because I am a homeless person.”
“I mean you look like you’ve been living in your car. You drove all the way here with all your stuff blocking the back window?”
“I only need to see where I’m going, not where I’ve been,” George declared with a grunt as she hauled in a suitcase and a duffel bag.
“Nice cloud of dust you raised up. What were you doing when you pulled into the driveway? Sixty?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What happened to the Pink Lady, anyway?” Sera asked as she looked George’s car up and down. “She’s a wreck.”
“Time, pure and simple. The past fifteen years haven’t left you untouched either, you know. And you haven’t even been sprayed with road salt daily five months out of each year.”
“Ha ha. I’ll have you know I look fabulous. As always.”
“And you’re so modest. As always.”
Sera gave George a cursory kiss on the cheek around Amelia, who sat bolt upright in her mother’s arms, staring curiously at her aunt.
George set down her load and tickled Amelia’s ribs under her striped T-shirt. “There’s my little squidgy.” Amelia giggled and squirmed. “Hey, she’s cute.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
So this was what it was like to be an aunt, George thought. Not half bad. The cute kid with the pudgy arms and the blue eyes just needed her auntie to make a funny face, like this . . . Amelia giggled again, and George felt pretty proud of herself.
“Oh, good, she likes you,” Sera said. “That’ll make things much easier. Here you go.” And she handed Amelia to her sister.
“Hey, whoa. Just like that?” George stiffened immediately; the feel of a baby in her arms was completely foreign, and she wasn’t sure it was exactly pleasant. When was the last time she’d held a baby? She’d done some babysitting when she was a teenager. That was so long ago it might as well have been another lifetime. She shifted her niece in her arms and instinctively jutted out a hip for balance as her body started to remember while her panicked mind scrambled to catch up.
“No time like the present.” Sera walked away, down the hall toward the kitchen, and George followed.
“Can I maybe unpack first?”
“Nope.”
“Sera,” George ventured cautiously, glancing at Amelia as though she were afraid to speak plainly in her presence, “are you sure this is a good idea? I mean—”
“Don’t start the ‘no experience with kids’ thing again, George. What’s to know? It’s as natural as breathing.”
“Maybe for you.”
“You’ll pick it up as you go along.”
“I just don’t want to break your kid.”
“If you do, I’ll break your leg. Just for starters.”
“There’s incentive. Got any food?”
“What, there were no Burger Kings on the way?”
“I haven’t touched Burger King in years.”
A pile of laundry, most of which seemed to consist of tiny pink and yellow socks, lay heaped on the kitchen table. Sera dug in and started folding. “You’re different,” she said bluntly.
“So are you.”
“Only ten extra pounds, I’ll have you know. I lost the rest of the baby weight.”
Sera did look sensational, George had to admit. As always. Sera, three years older than George, was curvaceous, strong, and sporty, while George had always been a pale slip of a girl with a dusting of freckles and no figure to speak of. They both had their mother’s dark amber eyes; George had her flyaway strawberry-blond hair, but Sera’s was shiny and honey-colored. It was as though the Down traits had been put to better use, and had come together better, in her older sister. When they were growing up, George had always aspired to be as attractive as her sister. And failed.
“I’m not talking about what you weigh.”
Sera placed a folded T-shirt into the laundry basket perched on one of the chrome chairs. “I know.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“You missed a lot.”
“I’ve heard.”
Amelia pulled on a handful of George’s hair. George looked at her niece, who stared back with enormous blue eyes and drooled a little. George whisked the bit of saliva away with her thumb, and Amelia made a small whiny noise.
“What does she want?”
Sera laughed a little as she put more folded clothes in the basket. “Don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaking out!”
“Of course you’re not.” Still laughing, Sera pulled a beaded silicone ring out of the freezer. “She’s teething. Her gums ache all the time. Just keep rotating these frozen thingies—she’s got three—two in the freezer, one in her mouth. She likes to toss them under the sofa, so if you can’t account for all of them, look there first.”
George watched her sister wiggle the teething ring between Amelia’s lips until the little girl opened wide and chomped down on it. “How’s Jaz doing?”
“Mm. Well enough. She’s napping right now. Some of her meds make her drowsy.”
“How bad is it? How did it happen? Which farm—who’s liable—”
“George, relax.” With a heave, Sera hauled the basket of clothes off the chair and marched it down the hall, dropped it at the foot of the stairs.
“I’m just saying, if the farm was lax on their safety—”
“Jaz was moving some hay bales and she turned wrong. Nobody’s fault,” Sera said, coming back into the kitchen. She transferred some dirty dishes from the counter to the sink and slammed on the water. “It�
�s a herniated disc. She probably won’t need surgery. Now ask me how I’m holding up.”
“I know the answer to that already: barely. Otherwise you wouldn’t have worked so hard to get me here.”
As if to admonish George, Amelia decided now was the perfect moment to bop her aunt on the head with her teething ring, then she threw it a fair distance just for fun. Not a bad pitching arm, George thought as she crossed the room to retrieve it.
“Oh God, don’t do that!” her sister cried.
George jumped. “What? What’d I do?”
“Don’t bend over while you’re carrying the baby. She’ll throw up.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Bend at the knees. Or put her down first. Here—put her in her high chair. She probably wants a snack anyway.”
George gratefully deposited her niece in the chair, pushed in the tray with a bit of fumbling, and watched as Sera shook out what looked like tiny, star-shaped pieces of Styrofoam from a tall canister. “Ew.”
“She likes these. She can pick them up herself—makes her feel like she’s accomplishing something.”
“Okay, but, you know—ew.”
“They’re for baby palates, not yours.”
“She can keep ’em; I don’t want ’em.”
“And after she’s done, you can change your first diaper, Auntie George.”
Oh God.
“Hey, girlie.”
George glanced up from her laptop to see her sister-in-law inching gingerly into the kitchen. “Oh my God! Jazmine!” She pushed off from the table and met her in the doorway, reaching out to give her a hug.
“Easy!” Sera snapped.
“I know! Sheesh, what do you take me for?”
“A clod, as always.”
George ignored her sister and gingerly embraced Jaz, patting her back with one hand and her fluffy halo of an afro with the other. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad.”
“You’re thinner, if that’s at all possible.” Jaz may have been a CPA by trade, but with her slight build and grace—even when stiff with pain—she could have been mistaken for a ballerina. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“The doctor says she has to get some exercise so her back doesn’t seize up,” Sera said.
“This is as much as I can manage right now.” Jaz eased herself into a chair. “How’s the big city?”
“Still there.”
“I can’t believe Sera talked you into leaving.”
“It wasn’t that hard. I kind of wanted to take off, clear my head a little.”
Jaz laughed, then winced. “I’m not sure coming back to Marsden is going to do that.”
“True.”
“It’s been a long time, honey.”
“I know. Sorry. Time just got away from me.”
“Bullshit. Thom got to her,” Sera groused.
The last time George had seen her sister and her wife was long before Amelia was born. George refused to visit her hometown for so long Sera and Jaz had taken matters into their own hands and traveled to Boston to see her. George had spent five days showing them all the sights—Boston Common, the Bull and Finch (which, Sera had declared loudly, looked nothing like the Cheers bar, even though George had warned her ahead of time), Faneuil Hall, the aquarium, the Freedom Trail, the Back Bay for snobs, the North End for Italian food, up the coast to Gloucester for seafood and Salem for witches.
They visited around the time she’d just started seeing Thom, back when she was so excited about her new relationship that she bent Sera’s and Jaz’s ears the entire time they were visiting—over breakfast in her old apartment, on the T as they scooted from one touristy spot to another, between retail displays as they shopped. Too bad she had no idea how it was going to turn out—she would have toned it down a bit.
And Sera was right (though George hated to admit it)—after she moved in with Thom, things went south. Thom led her to believe the only company they needed was each other, and she’d been so infatuated that she believed him. Until she opened her eyes a few years down the road and realized she was completely isolated. She had dropped all her outside interests, had lost her friends, had lost touch with her family. She could even stay in their condo for days at a time without speaking to anyone besides Thom. For a while, she thought she was happy in her isolation, but slowly she realized Thom had stripped her identity down to nothing so he didn’t have to accommodate any of her wants and needs. That, more than anything, had shaken her out of her stupor and convinced her to break free. Now she had more than a few burned bridges to mend.
So maybe being back in Marsden was a good thing, she thought. She could reconnect with her family, starting with Sera and Jaz and Amelia. And when her parents came back, she’d work on reestablishing something with them, too. But first things first: basking in Jaz’s brilliant, warm smile . . . and trying to cozy up to Sera’s brittle personality and sharp, emotional edges.
Thank goodness for Jaz—George had always gotten along better with her than her own sister. Of course, Jaz didn’t come with all the sisterly baggage that was an ever-present wedge between George and Sera—all the old resentments, the accusations that their parents liked the other best and allowed the other to get away with more, fighting over toys (but, fortunately, never boys, as Sera had realized she was into girls pretty early on). The truth was the sisters had never really liked each other. Loved each other? Sure. Liked? Not so much. Maybe, George thought, that could change now they were adults. But then again . . . one look at Sera’s hard eyes staring at her and she wasn’t so sure she could pull it off.
“What?” George said, peering at her sister over the screen of her laptop. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Do you ever put that thing down?”
“What . . . my computer?”
“Duh.”
“Leave her alone, Sera,” Jaz murmured.
Good ol’ Jaz. She always had her back. Of course, Sera was having none of it.
“You think you’re going to be attached to your computer twenty-four hours a day? Because I’ve got news for you—Amelia won’t let that happen.”
George softened what would have come out as an aggravated growl if she’d let it, turned it into a sigh. “No, not twenty-four hours a day. But I do have things to do on my blog every day.”
“Weird way to waste time.”
Waste time?! George bristled. “I’m not ‘wasting time.’ This is how I make my living.”
Sera smirked, clearly skeptical. “Hardly the same as that job you quit last year.”
“I didn’t quit. I was ‘downsized.’”
“And you stayed unemployed. Because Thom told you to.”
George knew what Sera was getting at. She’d had a job at a pretty important ad agency, as a copywriter. Trouble was, it was hardly Mad Men. In fact, it was damned boring, her days filled with the senseless efforts of trying to write something clever that would convince the widget-deprived they needed to buy more widgets. When the downsizing news came through, George was sort of frightened, but sort of excited at the same time—finally she was going to have the freedom to find another job, one that had to be more interesting than the last one. But then Thom had suggested she stay home and he’d “take care of her” so she “wouldn’t have to run herself ragged” commuting and taking care of all the homemaking tasks as well (because somehow Thom got out of pitching in on the whole chores-and-errands thing by wailing that his job was more important than hers).
She’d found herself agreeing to the change, with reservations, which turned out to be prophetic. Sure, she didn’t have to go out to a job, but it turned her into a housekeeper—an unpaid one. And it put the last nail in the coffin of her isolation. She’d hated it. After five months of nothing but cooking and cleaning, she’d started looking for another job, but Thom had always found fault with every one she bookmarked on the career sites—long hours, too far away, not really her field, beneath her, etc.
“I can’t believe tossing up a post or two about how awful your boyfriend was gets you an income,” Sera scoffed.
George had never expected to find her calling online, of course. And now she had to defend it to her sister, who just didn’t get it—or refused to try. George opened her mouth to speak, but Jaz got there first.
“Are you kidding? This little girl makes hurting people laugh. That’s good therapy. Not to mention she gives great advice if somebody asks for it.”
“You read her blog?” Sera asked, shocked.
“All the time.”
George turned to Jaz. “Thank you, Mrs. Down-Montgomery. I like you a whole lot better than my real sister. Just wanted you to know.”
“Right,” Sera said with a punctuating snort. “She’s a regular Dear Abby.”
“I don’t do that a lot,” George demurred. “And if somebody writes to me with a major problem, like they’re being abused, I give them the names and numbers of agencies and professionals to contact. I’m not qualified to counsel them and I know it. I don’t overreach.” She frowned, confused at her sister’s strong negative reaction to her livelihood. “Look, my blog is meant to be fun, and it helps people. I enjoy it. Why do you have such a problem with it—and you haven’t even read it?”
“Some people have real lives and real problems,” Sera said, lifting Amelia out of her high chair. “And real jobs.”
“This is a real job. And I have plenty of real problems.”
“Sure you do.”
“Yo, Miss Gotta-Have-the-Last-Word,” George called to her retreating back. “This isn’t over.”
“I’m putting Amelia down for her nap. Stop shouting.”
George turned to Jaz. It was worse than she thought. And definitely worse than she remembered. Jaz merely shrugged her right shoulder a bit—a small move that wouldn’t give her injured back a painful twinge. “She’s your sister. You explain it to me.”
“I have no freakin’ idea.”
Chapter 5
“Come on, Amelia. Open up your gob for auntie.”
Apparently little Amelia liked the word “gob,” because she started giggling hysterically.
“Gob,” George said again, stifling a yawn as she leaned toward her niece, who sat in her high chair, kicking mightily under the tray. “Gob, gob, gob.”
