Sins of the Fathers Read Free Page A

boast of her own, then grinned at her silliness. “I thought when we were done with business, we could go to Jekyll for a couple of nights, if the cottage is free.”
    “I don’t know, but you can call and ask. Would you like me to do it?”
    “No, I will. I mostly wanted permission to use it.”
    “Of course. You know you don’t have to ask.”
    Katharine knew she didn’t, just as Posey knew she always would. Like good sisters, she and her sister-in-law preserved certain courtesies between them.
    “Do you still have your key?” When Katharine hesitated, Posey apologized in an embarrassed rush. “I keep forgetting what a mess those thieves made.”
    It was Katharine’s turn to be embarrassed. “They took all the keys from our key board, too. Tom changed our locks, but I didn’t think about your keys being on the board.” Not only the Jekyll cottage key, but keys to the Buiton’s sprawling home.
    “If they haven’t used the keys by now, chances are they won’t, but I’ll mention it to Wrens. He’ll probably want to change our locks. You know how he is.”
    Yes, Katharine knew how Posey’s big, placid husband was—too easygoing to worry about keys that had disappeared a month before when he had an excellent security system in the house and lived close enough to the governor to get a quick response if anybody did break in, but he was so devoted to his wife that he’d change every lock just to please her.
    “Hold on a minute.” Posey put her on hold. Katharine presumed she was taking another call until she came back on the line. “The cottage is free and I told the realtor you’re coming, so she’ll air the place. The hidden keys are in their usual places. Stay as long as you like. They don’t have anybody coming in for two weeks. But next time you want to go down, let me know ahead and I’ll go with you. I could use time on the beach. Tanning beds make me look sallow.”
    “It’s a deal. And thank you from the bottom of my soul. A few days at the beach ought to help me recuperate from shopping and redecorating. Which reminds me. Do you know if Hollis is home? I’ll need to cancel our shopping this week.” Katharine danced a private little jig as she said those words. She loathed shopping.
    Posey’s sigh came from the toes of her exercise shoes. “Oh, yes, she’s up in that poky little apartment running the sewing machine. I heard it going when I went out to the car. Why that child won’t come downstairs and live with us, I don’t know. We’ve got the whole blooming house…”
    Hollis, Posey’s youngest daughter, had recently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design and had asked to live in her family’s carriage-house apartment, which had once housed a former family’s chauffeur. The apartment was far from the hovel Posey pretended. For one thing, it sprawled over the Buitons’ four-car garage and had more square feet than Katharine and two roommates had shared one summer during her college years. For another, since Wrens doted on his three daughters as much as he doted on his wife, the apartment gleamed with fresh paint, Ikea furniture, new appliances, refinished oak floors, and Hollis’s own quirky taste in fabrics and paint. Unlike Katharine, none of the female Buitons disliked shopping, so they had completed the redecoration of the apartment in record time.
    Hollis, who had studied textiles and fibers, was helping Katharine redecorate her house after the break-in. Katharine wasn’t enjoying the shopping, but she was enjoying spending time with her newly adult niece.
    “Don’t knock her for using the sewing machine,” Katharine told Hollis’s mother. “She may be sewing drapery for my dining room.”
    “I wish she’d get a real job.”
    “Talk to Tom about how real Hollis’s job is after he’s paid her bill. You could be astonished at how well she’s doing.”
    “Maybe so,” Posey sounded dubious, “but her taste in men hasn’t improved. Last night she