Pickin Clover Read Online Free

her wheat-colored hair, encouraging it to stand on end just the way Louie had when he cut it yesterday afternoon.
    She leaned in close to the mirror and applied color the shade of ripe strawberries to her full mouth, then fumbled in her bag for the amber shadow that matched her eyes. She brushed some on, found her small round sunglasses in her purse and put them on, then burst out of the change cubicle.
    Dana already had Polly’s purchases folded in tissue inside one of Bramble’s distinctive black shopping bags.
    Polly scribbled her signature on the charge-card receipt without even looking at the total, waved a cheery goodbye and hurried out to her car. She and Norah hardly ever met for lunch, and now she was going to be at least fifteen minutes late, she realized, squealing the tires as she pulled into traffic.
    She knew Norah was always ten minutes early, which drove Polly nuts. It made her feel inadequate.
    Why did so many things make her feel inadequate lately? Or was it just one big thing—her marriage—that made her feel that way? She shoved the thought out of her head and concentrated on driving. There was a parking space right in front of the cafe. She breathed a prayer of thankfulness and wheeled into it.
    After grabbing the present from the seat beside her, she shoved change into the meter, then sprinted into the restaurant, deliberately ignoring the sign that indicated the parking spot had a thirty-minute limit.
    She saw Norah right away, in a long, loose, printed beige dress that didn’t do a thing for her. How could her sister have been born without any sense of style? Polly wondered in despair. Norah was sitting at one of the wrought-iron tables in the garden area under the skylight, sipping iced tea.
    Polly plunked herself on the empty chair across from her, blew out a huge breath and handed over the birthday gift. “Sorry I’m late. Happy thirty-fourth, baby sister.”
    Norah smiled the hesitant one-sided smile that was one of her greatest charms. She stroked the small box with a forefinger. “Look at this wrapping paper. I hate to even open it it’s so wonderful.”
    Polly grinned with pleasure. She’d spent hours the night before designing the wrapping paper and the card, painting tiny roses all over crumpled brown paper, figuring out a card that was meaningful.
    Norah carefully undid the card from the intricately knotted twine and slid it out of its envelope.
    Polly had found a childhood picture of the two of them and glued it onto a folded piece of rag paper. Polly was about eight, Norah six. They were sitting on the steps of their parents’ house, squinting into the sun, arms wound tightly around each other, knees bare and scabby.
    Their mother had taken the picture. Taking pictures had been Isabelle’s hobby. She must have told them to smile, because they both had huge phony grins on their faces. Norah was missing two top teeth right in the front. Inside the card Polly had printed: “With or without teeth, you’ll always be the sister of my heart. Happy birthday, dear Norah.”
    Norah’s hazel eyes filled with tears, and she gave Polly a quavery grin. “Thanks so much, Pol. Your cards always make me cry. How can you figure out exactly the right thing to say?” She unwrapped the gift, then folded the paper into a meticulous, tidy square before she took the lid off the small jewelry box.
    Norah’s exclamation of shocked delight was exactly what Polly had hoped for. She watched as her sister lifted the antique oversize gold watch on its long, heavy chain out of the nest of cotton wool. The intricately scrolled case glowed in the muted sunlight that poured through the skylight above them.
    “Oh, this is too much. Oh, Polly, it’s exquisite. But it must have cost the earth.”
    “Try it on.” Polly bounded to her feet took the watch and slipped it over Norah’s dark, silky head, settling it on the front of her nondescript dress. The watch made a statement, just as Polly had known it