by Cindy Myers
“No.” Shelly swallowed, then said the word again, louder, and with greater force. “No. I won’t help you write a book. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Don’t take that attitude with me.” Mindy popped up from the couch and rushed at Shelly so fast Shelly took a step back. Mindy grabbed her arm. “You owe me this. Our whole life, you got everything, while I got the leftovers. Well, I’m not going to let you cheat me out of this chance. This publisher is willing to pay me a lot of money for your story, and I’m going to give it to them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—leftovers.” Shelly tried not to show how shaken she was by Mindy’s words. “Mom doted on you. The two of you were just alike. I was the outsider, the one who never fit in with your shopping trips and fashion shows. You were Miss Sweetwater County, for goodness sake!”
“I only entered that pageant to try to get Mom’s attention,” Mindy said. “But it didn’t work. August seventh rolled around and it was back to ‘my darling Shelly.’ Whatever money we had went to pay for your clothes and do your hair, so that you’d look good for the television cameras.”
“But she wouldn’t let me get my teeth fixed.” Shelly ran her tongue over her newly straightened teeth, free of braces for only a few months now. “She wanted people to think we were still too poor to afford things like that, so I had to wait until I was grown, and pay for them myself.”
“It was still all about you,” Mindy said, refusing to be sidetracked from her rant. “Mom spent all her spare time writing letters and making phone calls to the press, to try to get attention for you.”
“Attention I never wanted,” Shelly protested. Honestly, had she and Mindy really grown up in the same household? Aside from the annual money grab over the anniversary of her burial and resurrection, Shelly had felt ignored by her family. She was the studious, shy, and reserved child in a family of brash and coarse rednecks. While her parents and little sister raced four-wheelers around the family ranch, Shelly had stayed in her room, reading Jane Eyre and dreaming of living in Victorian England. As far as she was concerned, the world her parents and Mindy reveled in was a scary, dangerous place. But they could never understand that.
“I can’t help it if you were too stupid to appreciate a good thing when you had it,” Mindy said. “But I’m not stupid. This is my one chance to make something of myself, and I’m going to take it. With or without your help.” She sat on the sofa again, arms and legs crossed, chin jutting defiantly.
Shelly sank onto the opposite end of the sofa. Fear of what lies Mindy might put into her book warred with an aching desire to find a way to mend fences with her little sister. No matter how much the woman before her might annoy her now, she had once been the tiny blond baby Shelly had carried around like a doll. In those early years, before Mindy became too aware of “the legend of Baby Shelly” as Shelly liked to call it, Mindy had worshiped her big sister. And Shelly had adored her. Mindy had been the one person in her life who didn’t expect to gain anything by knowing her. Leaving her parents behind had been hard, but leaving Mindy had been even harder.
“You can stay here a few days,” she said. “We’ll talk.”
Mindy immediately relaxed her defensive posture. “Thanks,” she said. She surveyed the living room once more. “I guess this place isn’t so bad, considering you’re here in the back of beyond.” She focused on the toys in the corner. “The detective I hired said you had kids.”
Her stomach knotted at the prospect of introducing her boys to an aunt they’d never even known existed. “I have two little boys, Cameron and Theo. They don’t know about the whole ‘Baby Shelly’ thing,” she said. “So don’t tell them. They don’t need to know.”
“What about your husband? The detective said you had one of those, too.” She wrinkled her nose, as if a husband were an unfortunate acquisition, like a smelly dog, or a cat with fleas. “Does he know?”
“Charlie knows, but we don’t talk about it.” Confessing her true identity to Charlie had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done; she’d been sure he’d either want to capitalize on her fame, like the rest of her family, or he’d run as fast as he could away from her and the media circus that was always a threat if anyone stumbled on her real identity. When he’d done neither, she’d known he was a keeper. “I like to keep the past in the past,” she said.
“Right. Well, I’m not so crazy about the past, either, but I do like to think about the future. Especially a future where I have lots of money to spend.” She stood and hefted the suitcase. “Why don’t you show me to my room?”
Shelly led the way to the guest room up under the eaves. “It’s kind of small, isn’t it?” Mindy wrinkled her nose at the quilt-covered bed and four-drawer dresser.
“If you don’t like it, there’s a very nice bed-and-breakfast, the Idlewilde—or you can try the motel.”
“No, this’ll do.” Mindy plopped the suitcase on the bed. “You run on and I’ll get ready to meet the rest of the family. Won’t they be surprised to see me?”
Surprise wasn’t the word Shelly would use to describe her own feelings, she thought as she hurried down the stairs. Shock. More than a little loathing. And a puzzling nostalgia—not for the way things had been, but the way she’d always wanted things to be. She’d always wanted a close relationship with a sister who understood and sympathized with her. Instead, she’d gotten Mindy, who, to hear her tell it, had been born with a grudge against her famous sibling.
Maybe this visit was a chance to change that dynamic. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life wondering what would have happened if she’d made more of an effort to be the kind of sister Mindy needed. The kind of sister that Shelly really wanted to be.
Photo by Studio 16
Cindy Myers worked as a newspaper reporter, travel agent, and medical clinic manager before turning to writing full time. She’s written both historical and contemporary romance, as well as dozens of short stories and nonfiction articles. Former president of San Antonio Romance Authors, Cindy is a member of Romance Writers of America, Novelists Inc., and Rocky Mountain Fiction writers. She is in demand as a speaker, teaching workshops and making presentations to both local and national writing groups. She and her husband and their two dogs live in the mountains southwest of Denver.
Visit her on the Web at cindimyers.com.
LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2015 by Cynthia Myers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3958-3
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-958-3
eISBN-10: 1-61773-958-8
