The Barefoot Believers (4 page)

“Without the surgery I might be able to be back at work in a few weeks.”

“And suffer so much damage that you might cut your career short by a few years? Not to mention the effect of not taking care of yourself and your general health and…” she paused to pointedly clear her throat “…well-being. Doesn't the Bible say something about physician heal thyself?”

“I refuse to take any guff from you on making choices that I should know better than to make.” Kate raised her head and narrowed her eyes at the sleek white, impersonal building before them. “Realtors who live in rented apartments and all that.”

Yes, the thirty-five-year-old fireball, noted as one of the city's “Realtors To Watch” in a sidebar for an article on the boom market in
Southern City Lifestyles,
did not actually own her own home. She had bought and flipped several houses and condos in the last four years but she had never lived in any of them. She'd find something she thought would make her happy, move in, paint, wallpaper, remodel, whatever it took, and the next thing she knew, she looked around her and realized she
wasn't
happy. So she'd go on the prowl again for a home, a haven, a…a…a…

It would help if she had any idea what it was she was really looking for. But to do that, she'd have to slow down long enough to examine her life and figure out what was missing.

“Are we going to hang out in your parking lot all day or are we going to actually make some use of this ritzy, three-hundred-dollar-shoe equivalent of an apartment of yours?”

Slow down? Examine her life? Like that was going to happen anytime soon!

“Don't pick on that apartment too much. It's going to be your headquarters for the next few weeks.” She took a few steps backward, guiding her sister one hobble at a time. “Months if you know what's good for you.”

“Again. Not taking guff from you on pushing myself too hard.” Kate made it up the walk, using the cane and sheer willpower.

Before Jo could launch an argument, or even come up with one, her cell phone bleated out the opening notes of the old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, “Our House.” Luckily it did not blare out the lyrics that spoke of finding love and home. Apropos, Jo had thought, to her work. Yet so ironic to her personal life.

But irony was not what made Jo wince at her insistent ring tone.

“If you want to get that call, I can manage on my own.” Kate took a step toward the sleek brass-and-glass door and winced.

“If it's important they can leave a message.” Jo swept in and placed her hand on her sister's back more to provide a place to fall than to take control.

“You're a good sister.”

Jo only felt a twinge of guilt that she let Kate think family love had motivated her refusing to answer the phone. While she had no idea, without checking, who might be on the other end of that call and what they would want from her, she did know it wouldn't be good. And unlike her sister, she would have no one to hold her up when the time came for her to take a fall.

Love. Fear. Guilt. At least she was acting out of some emotion and not just a blind sense of duty, right?

They made their way through the lobby and into the elevator. Then down the hallway…At least, Jo made it down the hallway.

Kate hung back, leaning on her cane and breathing hard.

“I should have rented a wheelchair,” Jo said, even as she pulled her keys from her purse. “Let me unlock the door then I'll come back and get you.”

“I am not helpless,” Kate snapped, her usually friendly features lined with pain. She slumped against the wall for support.

Jo rushed to her. “Are you sure you're supposed to be out of the hospital?”

“So sayeth the insurance company,” Kate joked.

“And your doctor?”

“I
am
a doctor.” Kate grimaced.

“Truth, Kate.”

Kate took a deep breath.

Her silence fueled Jo's suspicions.

“We don't have many traditions in our family, Kate. For that matter we don't even have much of a family. But when it mattered, you and I have always spoken the truth to each other. It's all we have.”

Kate nodded then exhaled in a long, low breath. “The truth is that my doctor thinks I've gone to the beach house.”

“The beach…? You mean that ratty old cottage in Florida?”

“Hey, that ratty old cottage in Florida provided us with some of the wonderful experiences of our lives.”

“You mean those vacations when we were kids?”

“No, I mean the rental money that paid for Mom to take a real vacation—away from us—once a year after we grew up.”

“Be sweet,” Jo warned with a laugh. They loved their mom with all their hearts, neither of them doubted that. She had done all she could to protect and nurture them—whether they needed it or not. She mothered them well with the underlying understanding—not unlike an electrical current that if exposed could wreak havoc—that Jo and Kate never needed to be mothered. They called this
good daughtering.

Dodie
needed
them to need her. What an awesome responsibility to place on already emotionally shaky children. So Jo could forgive Kate for joking about the blessed break Dodie's vacation gave them. Because she understood it and because joking was the only way they dared broach the subject.

The thought of precarious subjects brought Jo instantly back to the real topic at hand. “Why would your doctor think you'd gone to the cottage in Florida?”

“Oh, the usual reasons.”

“To moon over Vince Merchant?” If Kate insisted on giving nonanswers, Jo felt it completely within her rights as a little sister to respond with something Kate would have to react to.

“Vince Mer—Whatever made you think of him?” Kate, still leaning against the wall, twisted her upper body and gazed into the gold reflective elevator doors. “Of all the memories of that place, the cottage, the vacations, the sand in our shoes…our shorts…our hair…our ears—”

“I get it, sand.”

“And, um, surf. And so many things connected to that place. Why, at the mention of Florida, would you go straight to Vince Merchant?”

“I'll answer that if you will.” Jo smirked just a little. “But then, I guess, if you could answer it, then I wouldn't have to.”

“Do not start, Jo. I have let go of that man. Of that time. It was a lifetime ago. It doesn't mean anything anymore.”

“Uh-huh,” Jo murmured at yet another evasive reply, the keys in her hand jangling as they went sliding along in her search for the right one.

“Besides, there is no way Vince Merchant ended up in Santa Sofia,” Kate said so softly as she stared at the unblinking image of herself.

What was up with Kate? Jo paused to marvel. Refusing surgery. Misleading her doctor. After all these years to have that response to the mention of Vince. Was she about to run again? Why? And where could she go to escape the hurt she carried always in her heart?

“So tell me…” Jo drew a deep breath, considered the odds of getting a straight answer from her sister and asked instead, “Just why would your doctor think you would go to Florida?”

“Oh, you know.” Kate looked down. Her shoulders rose and fell. “To rest. To relax. To rejuvenate.”

“This doctor you're talking about?” She churned the key in the lock and pushed the door open with one shoulder before turning to face her sister and ask, “Has he ever actually
met
you?”

“Funny,” Kate droned, limping past and into the nearly empty front room. “And yes, he did meet me. Even made rounds while I was in the hospital and formed some pretty strong opinions of me.”

“I'll just bet.” Jo moved inside, but not fully. She hung back by the open door, halfheartedly wishing she could slip into the hallway alone, take one fortifying deep breath before she and her sister became roomies for who knew how long.

Kate managed a rather pitiful-looking grin. “Why else do you think I told him I planned to go out of state for an extended recovery period?”

“You
lied?
” All right, that shocked her. Kate was more perfect than Mary Poppins, after all.

“I did not lie,” Kate snapped in something that seemed like pain…or panic. She struggled to move forward with her cane and cast on the plush carpet.

“You lied to get out of having a doctor pester you to make follow-up visits.” Jo took two hurried steps to lend support. “Visits that might save you from a lifetime of limping, I might add.”

“Save your adding for that abacus you plan on buying.” Kate swatted away any attempt by Jo to aid her. “And don't be so…literal.”

Jo stood back and folded her arms. “Literal?”

“
Lying?
It's such a harsh word.”

“What would you call it?”

“I was thinking out loud.” The comeback came quick and sure, as if Kate had maybe rehearsed it in her head a few times trying to convince herself. “Mom was standing there telling
my
caregiver that she intended to make sure I didn't spend any time at my practice, like she actually had that kind of influence with me, that kind of power over what I do with my time, that say-so about my work.”

“And you couldn't stand the idea of it. You wanted to run so you invented a place you could run to and told yourself that was wishful thinking, not an outright fib.”

“Mom started it,” Kate protested. She attempted to put some of her weight on the foot in the large purple-and-white cast.

She looked so small. So vulnerable. Now, in the unkind artificial tract lighting, the circles under her eyes seemed so dark and the usually taut skin on her face and neck, drawn. It gave the impression of Kate being older than her years and much more intense, if that was possible, and anything but happy.

It made Kate look…

Jo drew in her breath and held it.

It made Kate look
like their father.

Not that Jo remembered him so much as she remembered pictures of him. Pictures that had long ago disappeared from their home and faded from her memory. There was one in particular of him with his hand on her shoulder. Kate stood nearby. Dad had insisted it be taken to show off his new truck—the truck their father would drive away in forever a few days after the picture was taken. But being Mom, she'd only gotten the front fender and a part of their family. If other photos had been taken that day, Jo could not recall. Her parents had fought. They'd always fought. And their dad had left.

Now Jo looked at her sister and could see something familiar of him in her. It spooked her a little.

No, given Kate's suddenly uncharacteristic behavior and their father's bitter betrayal, it spooked Jo
a lot.

Jo edged forward, her hands out.

Kate sucked air through her gritted teeth, her shoulders drew up but she still motioned to Jo to keep back. She took a step, gasped then shifted her weight back onto the antique cane and exhaled, her shoulders drooping. “Anyway, when my surgeon asked me what I might do with my time off, I looked at him and I looked at Mom and I couldn't help thinking about what she had said she planned to do and that I had promised I'd stop her from doing it, or doing
anything
so rash and—”

“Kate!”

The front door fell shut with a
wham.

“And I said I
might
go to Florida.” Kate didn't even pause in her rambling.
Step, gasp, shift.
Rambling
and
shuffling. “Just like that.
Might
go to Florida. Now is that lying, really?”

“Really? Yes, it is.” Jo tossed her keys into the bowl on the table by the door. She didn't have to look to see if they landed. She heard the familiar clunk and the wobble caused by the one uneven table leg. Like everything else in her apartment, she had put it there for convenience on the day she'd moved in and had seen no reason to adjust or change anything about it since then.

She had enough decorating and dressing places in her side business flipping properties. She had expended a lot of energy learning how to do that to ensure a fast sale with maximum profits. She had gotten so good at it she could turn a house in a matter of six weeks, a month if pressed or maybe…

“Three weeks,” she muttered. “Given the right market.”

Fast sale. Maximum profits. Beach house in Florida.

Love. Fear. Guilt.

Rest. Relaxation. Rejuvenation.

Her goals and motivations as well as Kate's stated needs clicked through her mind just like that and one by one she placed a mental tick in the box beside each one.