The Barefoot Believers (3 page)

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.

B
eing 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.

“Somebody had to step in and take charge of you.” Jo lowered her foot and finally moved back enough so that Kate could swing her legs and her cane out the door. “You can't drive. You can't work. You can barely walk. Face it, Kate, you are totally dependent on me.”

People liked to say they looked remarkably alike, always adding—for being complete opposites.

Jo didn't see it. The alike part. The opposites, that she understood to the depths of her being.

Yes, they both had the vivid green eyes of their mother's family. And they stood exactly the same height, barefoot. But Jo made it a point never to
go
barefoot, so that hardly counted. Where Jo had fair skin and natural blond hair—grown by naturally blond women in some distant Nordic country and naturally woven to the hair on Jo's scalp—Kate had their father's coloring. Dark blond hair with sun streaks, a dark tan from years of that outdoorsy life she loved so much, not to mention her dark sense of humor.

“Totally dependent on
you?
Where is Mom and her car when I need them? Maybe I can lie on the pavement and she can just finish me off.” Kate gave a wry, throaty laugh. Just the thing to take the edge off her cutting remark. Of course.

Jo extended her hand to assist her sister up and out of the car. “Mom has hunkered down with one of her friends in her old condo building. I don't think we have to worry about her getting up to anything too ambitious until you're back on your feet.”

“I
am
on my feet.” She slapped Jo's hand away, tried to stand then staggered backward.

Jo caught her.

She winced.

This time she accepted the assistance with a heavy sigh, making it clear she did not like the situation, not one bit. “This is just temporary, you know. Three weeks, tops.”

“Three weeks?”

Three weeks.
The same amount of time Jo had until her own little house of cards would collapse around her. Instantly Jo saw that as one of those good news/bad news deals. The bad news was that she had three weeks to try to salvage her career and any scrap of self-worth she still possessed. The good news was that if she spent that time taking care of Kate, she probably wouldn't mind facing the end of her world quite so much.

She stepped in and anchored her feet to provide added support as Kate struggled to get stable on her feet. Foot. “Is that what the doctor told you? Three
weeks?
”

Kate mumbled something.

“What?” Jo cocked her head. “I don't believe I heard that.”

“
Months.
The surgeon said three months before I could put my full weight on it for any length of time.
If
I have the other surgeries that he seems to think I am going to need…if I want to, you know, not walk with a limp and cane the rest of my life.”

“
If
you have the surgery that will save your foot? There's some doubt?” Jo pulled her sister up until they stood shoulder to shoulder and yet still could not see eye to eye.