Family Affair Read Free Page A

group meeting." Which, come to think of it was her turn to host. This meant she'd have to shovel out the writing studio and soon.
     
    Chase clicked off and got back to work. To keep on schedule, she had to write fifteen pages a day. She turned to her notebook and began scribbling, letting her imaginary world take-over. It was more comforting than the real world. In her world, she controlled everything.
     
    Gitana was home from work. The dogs dashed out the broken screen doggy door and were across the front yard before Chase had shut her notebook, got up and stretched. If anyone thought the writing life was glamorous they were sadly misinformed. Sitting was difficult for the hyperactive. Her back hurt, her fingers cramped up and her mind was tired from creating an entire universe in her cerebral cortex.
     
    From the front yard, she heard Gitana cooing and fawning over the dogs. Chase imagined Gitana as a mother. She'd make a great mother, a perfect mix of love and discipline. She herself was the one who needed serious reconstruction. One of her writing manuals purported that any subject could be mastered by spending sixty days in a decent library. Was the same possible with parenting?
     
    Chase made her way down to the sunroom and kissed Gitana.
     
    "How was your day?" Gitana asked, as she scratched first Annie's ears and then Jane's.
     
    "Well spent and yours?"
     
    "Profitable."
     
    That was Gitana's keyword for she sold a lot of orchids or she got a wicked deal on a shipment of orchids. She looked radiant. Had her pregnancy already given her that glow people always talk about?
     
    "Are you still willing to have that chat with Stella?"
     
    Gitana smiled. "No time like the present."
     
    She said it without cringing. Chase was impressed. "We'll feed the dogs and then pop over during her cocktail hour."
     
    "Is she more amiable then?"
     
    Chase nodded. "More like less argumentative. Her combat skills are slightly impaired." She bounced a tennis ball for Jane who caught it in midair.
     
    "At least that's in our favor," Gitana said, as she opened the kitchen door.
     
    Chase followed her in. The dogs came in behind them. Gitana set her bag on the counter and retrieved two biscuits from the treat jar. She indicated down with her hand and both dogs sat. She gave them their biscuits and patted their heads.
     
    "Let's get it over with," Chase said, filling the dog bowls with kibble and trying to look cheerful.
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Stella Banter lived in an enormous house in Four Hills. The silos of the missiles that were part of Kirkland Air Force Base were ostensibly in her backyard. She liked it that her property was protected in the finest manner. It went well with the rest of her well-deserved privileged life. Every time Chase pulled up in the circular driveway with its automatic black wrought iron gates—the letter "B" prominently displayed—she wondered about all this privilege and how much of it was truly deserved. Not that Chase had not benefited from the money—but she saw it as fortuitous, not a right. Novels of the horrors of the poor often popped into her head: Jude the Obscure, The Grapes of Wrath and Sinclair's The Jungle. She was simply a member of the Lucky Sperm Club and guilt welled up.
     
    "Her gardens always look so beautiful," Gitana said, as they passed through the poplar trees that lined the drive. Behind them lay manicured lawns and flower beds. There was a pond and a stone wall section lined with topiaries.
     
    "Yeah, and it takes two full-time gardeners and a lot of water." She parked in front of the house—a brick colonial something like Martha Stewart's Turkey Hill. They'd driven Chase's car, a steel gray Volkswagen Passat. The car irritated her mother because it wasn't flashy. It was 'the People's car,' Chase had informed her.
     
    "People without means, kind of car," was her mother's retort.
     
    She didn't want her mother to think that just because she was going to be a grandmother