Precious Gifts Read Free Page B

o’clock every morning, to bake all her breakfast goods for her first customers, who arrived at six, and she was usually there until seven p.m., when she went home and fell asleep in front of the television for several hours, exhausted from the long day. Like Timmie’s, her life centered entirely on work.
    By the time Juliette got home that afternoon, Arnold was calling Joy, the youngest sister. She was harder to reach, as he had expected her to be, and had a very different life. Joy lived in L.A., where she had been pursuing an acting career. She had a real musical talent, and her mother had wanted her to go to Juilliard to develop it. Instead, Joy had dropped out of college at the first opportunity and headed for L.A. She took voice lessons that she paid for herself, worked as a waitress, and after six months of singing with bands that were going nowhere, she switched to acting lessons, and had been struggling to make it ever since. She had done a few minor commercials and bit parts on TV. She was hoping to get a part in a series, and had a knack for comedy. At twenty-six, she was still working as a waitress and had been in L.A. for five years. Her big break hadn’t come yet, but she still believed it would. And her father had believed it, too, and always encouraged her.
    She was a spectacularly beautiful girl with long, dark hair, huge violet eyes, an incredible figure, and a great singing voice she rarely used. She took every acting job she could get. She went to every audition and was willing to endure all the hardships of a budding acting career. She still insisted she would make it one day. She had told her sisters that if nothing major happened in L.A. by the time she was thirty, she would try Off Broadway in New York instead. But she wasn’t willing to give up on landing a part in a hit series in L.A. yet. She was determined to make it in Hollywood. She’d been on several daytime soaps, but never as a regular. Véronique watched her on TV, but lamented the small parts she got.
    Joy had a boyfriend who was an actor, too. He was in the road company of second-rate shows, and rarely at home in L.A. They hardly ever saw each other, which was typical of the men in Joy’s life. She always seemed to pick someone emotionally unavailable or physically far away. And in the past five years, she had drifted away from her family, while pursuing her career in L.A. Their lives were so different from hers, she had less and less in common with her sisters, and didn’t even look like them. Sometimes she felt as though she had been switched at birth and wasn’t even related to them. And although her father had always made a fuss over her, mostly because of how beautiful she was even as a child, she had even less in common with him. Her looks had fed his narcissism, but she always felt that he didn’t really know her, and had never tried.
    And she and her mother had had problems for years. Véronique was still upset at her for dropping out of college, and the life she lived, working as a waitress more than she got acting jobs. It wasn’t the life her mother wanted for her. She was capable of so much more, and it seemed like a dead end to her, and she hoped she’d get over it and come back to New York. It was a subject Joy’s parents never agreed on, and always argued about. Her father’s conclusion was always “oh, let her have her fun,” unconcerned about her. Her mother worried about her, and her sisters never took Joy seriously either. Making it as an actress in Hollywood seemed like a long shot to them, and they acted like it was a hobby, not a career.
    But whatever their arguments about it, Joy had been doing what she wanted, with no help from them, and eking enough of a living out of the bit parts and waitressing to get by. She wanted to find a decent manager and a better agent, but hadn’t found the right ones yet. It all took time. She loved what she was doing, and the years she had spent on it didn’t seem long