One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) Read Free

sitting back down at the bar. “Sorry, I was sopping up one of my messes and couldn’t get to the phone in time.”
    “You always were a klutz.”
    “Why does everyone have to constantly remind me of that?” Amy laughed. “What’s up?”
    “I just wanted to tell you I saw Rob on the news last night. He looks really great. Are you sure you two can’t work things out?”
    “Maybe I don’t want to work things out with him.”
    “Why not? You should! He is so good for you.”
    “Good for me how?”
    “He makes you look successful!”
    Amy figured that’s what she meant. Her mother had been disappointed by Amy for some time, and she had a high regard for the importance of finding a man with a good income.
    When Amy’s father died in his early forties in a Colorado mining accident, her mother sat down with her and laid out their situation in unambiguous terms. Unbeknownst to either of them, her father’s life insurance policy had been terminated for non-payment years before his death. Apparently, he had found something better to spend the money on—most likely his gambling habit, Rachel grumbled to her daughter. But even though she wouldn’t be able to help Amy pay her way through college and pave her way to success, she was confident Amy would use her brains and her common sense and succeed anyway.
    Rachel remarried and moved to L.A. with Any’s new stepfather back in the late 1990s, just as Amy was entering her sophomore year high school. Amy had opted to stay in Denver with her grandmother rather than change schools in the middle of her high school tenure. By the time Amy and Rob moved to Palm Springs, finally close enough that mother and daughter could see each other regularly, her mother had gone from believing Amy would be a success whatever she did to believing she was destined for failure.
    Amy had no idea what changed her mother’s opinion of her destiny. Perhaps it was the fact that even though she was nearly thirty, Amy still hadn’t settled on a career or made any measurable progress up any kind of employment ladder. Or perhaps it was that in the vicinity of Rob’s bright light, Amy’s talents no longer looked that luminescent. In any case, Rachel had gone from delivering pep talks that motivated her daughter to ladling out criticism that undermined her confidence.
    “Mom, we aren’t getting back together,” Amy said. “Why would Rob give up all those bimbos hanging on his arms and come back to me? There’s absolutely nothing in it for him.”
    “But doesn’t he love you? Don’t you still love him?”
    The question had become tedious and beside the damn point, Amy had told her mother at least three dozen times.
    “No,” she said flatly once more. “No. There is no love lost here. We quit sleeping together at least a year before he left. And it wasn’t good for me for a long time before that.”
    “That’s your problem!” her mother exclaimed. “You young women confuse sex with love. You still loved each other. And I don’t really want to know about your you-know-what.”
    “You mean my orgasms.” Amy sighed. She knew where her reticence to talk openly about sex came from. “Why can’t you just call it what it is. Why is it always ‘you-know-what?’?”
    “Nice girls don’t talk about those things,” her mother scolded.
    “Mom, I’m not going to talk about it with you, that’s for sure,” Amy shook her head at the phone. “Now did you call just to torment me about how good-looking you think Rob is, or did you have something else on your mind?”
    “You sound awfully sharp today, Amy,” her mother replied, not answering her question. “Did something happen?”
    “Well, yes, but it’s not important.”
    “You can tell your mother,” Rachel cooed. Amy rolled her eyes. Her mother always tried to bring out the compassionate mother act. If she’d been such a loving mother, she would never have moved away to L.A. in the middle of her daughter’s high school years,