At Home in Stone Creek (Silhouette Special Edition) Read Free Page B

challenged quietly. “If I weren’t nine and a half months along, you’d be in my face right now.”
    Ashley bit down hard on her lower lip and said nothing.
    â€œThings can’t change if we don’t talk,” Olivia persisted.
    Ashley swallowed painfully. Anything she said would probably come out sounding like self-pity, and Ashley was too proud to feel sorry for herself, but she also knew her sister. Olivia wasn’t about to let her off the hook, squirm though she might. “It’s just that nothing seems to be working,” she confessed, blinking back tears. “The business. Jack. That damn computer you insisted I needed.”
    The kettle boiled, emitting a shrill whistle and clouds of steam.
    Still cradling the kitten under her chin, Ashley unplugged the cord with a wrenching motion of her free hand.
    â€œSit down,” Olivia said, rising laboriously from her chair. “I’ll make the tea.”
    â€œNo, you won’t!”
    â€œI’m pregnant, Ashley,” Olivia replied, “not incapacitated.”
    Ashley skulked back to the table, sat down, the tea forgotten. The kitten inched down her flannel work shirt to her lap and made a graceful leap to the floor.
    â€œTalk to me,” Olivia prodded, trundling toward the counter.
    Ashley’s vision seemed to narrow to a pinpoint, and when it widened again, she swayed in her chair, suddenly dizzy. If her blond hair hadn’t been pulled back into its customary French braid, she’d have shoved her hands through it. “It must be an awful thing,” she murmured, “to die the way Mom did.”
    Cups rattled against saucers at the periphery of Ashley’s awareness. Olivia returned to the table but stood beside Ashley instead of sitting down again. Rested a hand on her shoulder. “Delia wasn’t in her right mind, Ashley. She didn’t suffer.”
    â€œNo one cared,” Ashley reflected, in a miserable whisper. “She died and no one even cared .”
    Olivia didn’t sigh, but she might as well have. “You were little when Delia left,” she said, after a long time. “You don’t remember how it was.”
    â€œI remember praying every night that she’d come home,” Ashley said.
    Olivia bent—not easy to do with her huge belly—and rested her forehead on Ashley’s crown, tightened her grip on her shoulder. “We all wanted her to come home, at least at first,” she recalled softly. “But the reality is, she didn’t—not even when Dad got killed in that lightning storm. After a while, we stopped needing her.”
    â€œMaybe you did,” Ashley sniffled. “Now she’s gone forever. I’m never going to know what she was really like.”
    Olivia straightened, very slowly. “She was—”
    â€œDon’t say it,” Ashley warned.
    â€œShe drank,” Olivia insisted, stepping back. The invisible barrier dropped between them again, a nearly audible shift in the atmosphere. “She took drugs. Her brain was pickled. If you want to remember her differently, that’s your prerogative. But don’t expect me to rewrite history.”
    Ashley’s cheeks were wet, and she swiped at them with the back of one hand, probably leaving streaks in the coating of attic dust prickling on her skin. “Fair enough,” she said stiffly.
    Olivia crossed the room again, jangled things around at the counter for a few moments, and returned with a pot of steeping tea and two cups and saucers.
    â€œThis is getting to me,” she told Ashley. “It’s as if the earth has cracked open and we’re standing on opposite sides of a deep chasm. It’s bothering Brad and Melissa, too. We’re family , Ashley. Can’t we just agree to disagree as far as Mom is concerned and go on from there?”
    â€œI’ll try,” Ashley said, though she had to win an inner skirmish first. A