Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) Read Online Free Page A

fine,” she said, scratching Tandy’s ear.
    â€œNo,” I said, smiling at Tandy when she turned around to gloat. “I think she sees all the rest of us as competition.”
    Mom sighed and sat back up. “Well, us old girls will stick together.” She leveled a gaze at me. “Emmie, I’m just tired of the same old ordinary. I don’t want to get to the end and say I grew flowers in my old age. Maybe Bernie’s way isn’t stylish, but at least it’s doing something.”
    I nodded. On anyone else, it made a new age–artsy kind of sense. On Frances Lattimer, it was like she was possessed by aliens.
    â€œYou know, you could have just gone on some trips with Aunt Bernie without selling the house.”
    â€œI know,” she said. “But then I’d be worried about the house, or y’all would have to worry about it, and honestly I’m tired of all that. This house has more aches and pains than I do. And I do plan on finding that box before I go, by the way.”
    I rubbed my temples. “Oh, lord.”
    For as long as I could remember, my dad talked about going to faraway places. He and my mom planned trips that they never went on, but he always said he was tucking money aside for them. Somewhere. For someday. It was their game.
    Then he died. And my mother spent the last decade looking for some elusive box of money. Because he said there was one.
    â€œOh, lord, nothing,” she said. “Think what you want.”
    â€œSo what about Dad’s stuff upstairs?” I said. “Any of that part of the
things you can’t live without
?”
    She blinked away the sadness that appeared in her face. “I still have to deal with that. I’m talking about your things. All that stuff you conveniently forget is still here, tucked away in closets and the attic like your own little private storages?” She nodded with a knowing smirk. “You have houses they can go to now.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, changing the subject. “Two things.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDon’t sell it to Kevin.”
    She physically jerked back. “Kevin! What on earth?”
    I held my hands up. “He came by my house wanting to know what the asking price was. He’s looking for rental property.”
    â€œNo way in hell.”
    I flicked one finger. “Done. Now, two—you could have gone to any of fifty different Realtors in the area,” I said quietly. “Why Dedra?”
    Mom smiled. “I’ve only had the house listed for two days and I’ve already called her”—she reached for a nearby pad and peered through her glasses—“eighteen times to ask questions and change my information.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
    â€œTo be the client from hell,” she said, bringing an unexpected laugh from me. “You know how I don’t sleep, right? Well, I figure since I’m her client now, she doesn’t need to, either.”
    I covered my mouth, marveling at the level of shit-stirring my used-to-be-gardener mother could conjure. It was her way of getting back at the woman Kevin had thrown our marriage away for. Or the one he got busted for, anyway. A little delayed, since that’d been ten years earlier, but hey, who was I to split hairs. Personally, I’d made peace with it long ago. Sort of. Watching him go through one bad choice after another definitely helped.
    The door knocker banged, not as an opening but as an actual knock, and I did a double take as Tandy made a fire trail to the door and started raising hell. “Oh, I forgot I called Cassidy on the way here. Although I don’t know why she’d knock.”
    â€œActually, that may be the carpenter I called to come do some updates around here.”
    I paused in mid-rise. “You have somebody coming to do work?” It made it more real. Less of my mother having a mental break. My stomach did a little