Keeper of the Keys Read Online Free Page A

grave, I found the most beautiful bouquet of irises. She must have left them there. He liked them, remember?”
    The bouquet of irises in his kitchen had wilted and died by the time Kat and Jacki had gone to clean out his apartment. “Of course.”
    “You two used to be close. You should call her,” Jacki said.
    “Oh, you do make it irresistible, reconnecting with a haggard, crying former friend who—Tommy never would have died if—!”
    “You’re too harsh—”
    “She’s old business. Not your business, by the way. I haven’t seen Leigh since his funeral.” However, the image of Leigh standing by Tommy’s grave did rise up like a ghost before her, strange, unwelcome and compelling, a blurry image seen through a screen of tears.
    “Exactly.” Jacki ate her last shrimp. “So I saw her at the cemetery, then I read this article, and I started thinking about the three of you, how golden you were. I was always jealous of how close you and Leigh were, and I don’t think I’ve seen you happy, not really, since Tommy died and you and Leigh quit being friends.”
    Kat rolled her eyes and motioned to the waiter. “Margarita, no salt,” she said. “I get it, Jacki, I’m an antisocial flake. Can we move on?”
    “Oh, get over yourself. I’m not going to compliment you for your terrific professional success, your ability to be independent and strong and fun and”—Jacki reached over and stroked the edge of Kat’s blazer—“fashionable and loyal and the best friend I could have on earth. But see how cranky you got just then? You have issues and they’ll never go away until you deal with them. What’s the harm in giving her a call?”
    “I don’t want to see her. I hate her.” She threw cool margarita down her throat.
    Jacki shook her head. “You hate yourself.”
    “I gotta go.” Kat put a lot of cash on the table, because although Jacki and Raoul were okay financially, she knew they worried about the baby coming and how they could survive without Jacki working for a while. She reached down and pulled on the leather stacked-heel shoes. “I gotta rush now, off to the liquor store to stock up for the evening’s debauchery. Give the clerk my phone number while I’m at it. Thank goodness wine’s so cheap in California. I’m not yet reduced to drinking plonk from someplace in the world where you wouldn’t even drink the water.” She drank the rest of her drink standing up.
    Jacki patted her hand. “You deserve much, much more out of life than a little apartment, a stressful job, and the memory of our brother to keep you company.”
    Kat jumped up, hugged her sister, and said, “Enough, okay? You give good advice. If I were an integrated person like you, I would do whatever you say. I’d have two-point-six kids, an eight-hour workday, and a kindly rich fella by my side, hanging on tight to make sure I didn’t slip on an old banana peel.”
    Jacki looked her in the eye. “I’m telling you, the stars are aligning. I dreamed about us as kids last night, you and Leigh swinging in the backyard on Franklin Street. You pushed her, and she—oh, she laughed in this itty-bitty-little-girl voice, and then she tickled you until you fell. It’s precious, what you had.”

 
    2
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    E smé Jackson bustled around, wiping down the granite countertops in her kitchen, slipping a serrated knife through tomatoes. Her son, Ray, was due for their usual Sunday meal. She had considered something elaborate for dinner but rejected the idea, settling on strata—baked layers of bread, eggs, cheese, vegetables, cooked sausage, and crumbs. Peasant fare. He liked that sometimes.
    Fifty-nine, tall, still strong except for occasional breathing problems, she swung around her generous kitchen feeling lucky, so lucky to have a son like Ray, who loved her, who still came to dinner once a week. He was as dutiful as she had been to her own mother, sometimes at great personal risk. Her mother’s old flowered apron,