The Sometimes Sisters(18)

“Whoa! Wait a minute, Mother. I know how to hang up a telephone, and a corded one makes such a lovely loud bang. I won’t have you talkin’ trash about Granny.”

“She broke up our family,” Retha countered.

“I’d say you broke it up when you sent Harper to boarding school. Why’d you do that? Daddy was never the same afterward. She was only fifteen. What did she do to get exiled?” Tawny asked.

“She left on her sixteenth birthday. That’s tough love. You can have your inheritance when you are forty or when I see that you are finally acting responsibly. God knows that damn resort is breeding ground for trouble,” Retha snapped.

“Trouble finds me wherever I go, Mother. There’s about ten cabins here with mighty fine-lookin’ men in every one. And I’m not any farther than a city block from a convenience store that sells all kinds of beer. Bet if I went down to the high school I could even score some weed.” Tawny knew she was baiting her mother, but she couldn’t make herself stop.

“I can’t believe my kin would turn out the way you and Harper have. I would have expected it of your father’s bastard daughter, but you two had the best that money could buy.” Retha sighed.

“Dana probably turned out to be the best one of us. She’s got her head on straight and she’s a really good mom to Brook, so don’t bad-mouth her.” Tawny couldn’t believe that she was taking up for her older sister.

“You just proved that you aren’t worthy to get your inheritance yet,” Retha said, and the line went dead.

“Love you, too, Mama.” Tawny slammed the receiver back on the base and muttered, “If you had any idea what this place is worth, you’d be beatin’ a path up here to try to get your grubby little hands on part of it.”



A bunch of guys wearing caps with fishing hooks and all kinds of pins attached to the bills arrived in the café just as Harper made the rounds to refill drinks. She set two pitchers on the drink counter and headed over to the only empty table in the café. “Looks like all y’all are wearing your lucky hats today.”

“Yep, every one of us is slightly superstitious. I’ll have sweet tea and a double-meat, double-cheese burger basket,” the one closest to her said.

“And the rest of you?” she asked without really looking at any of them.

“Same as old Donnie,” another one said.

“Me too,” two more chimed in.

“Well, that makes it easy enough. And you?” she asked the guy who’d pulled up a fifth chair from a two-top.

“You got any of the cobbler left over from dinner?” he asked.

A jolt of something akin to electricity shooting through her body glued her to the floor. She’d never forgotten that deep voice or the way that her hormones whined when he was within twenty feet of her.

“We’ve got about eight servings, last I checked,” she answered.

“Save it all for us. If we don’t eat it now, we’ll take it to go, and hello, Harper,” Wyatt said.

“Wyatt.” Her voice was at least two octaves higher than normal, and her hands trembled. “What brings you back here?”

“He’s our fishin’ guide. We’ve been comin’ here the past three years during this week. So you know this old ragtag fisherman?” the oldest guy in the group asked.

“Used to, but a lot of water has run under the bridge since we were sixteen.” She fought against the desire to leave the café, get into her truck, and not even look in the rearview mirror. She could be packed up and out of there in exactly thirty minutes. When she’d gone to Tyler for supplies, she’d had both her tires fixed, so she was ready to go. But that wouldn’t be fair to Uncle Zed or to her granny’s memory.

She took the order all the way to the kitchen instead of pinning it up over the serving window. She only needed a few seconds to still her racing pulse and calm her thumping heart. Dammit! She’d thought she’d gotten over him for good.

Zed looked up from the grill and pointed to a bar stool by his prep table. “Sit! You look like you just saw a ghost. What’s happened? Did Annie appear to you?”

She hiked a hip on the stool by the work island and leaned her elbows on it. “No. Has she appeared to you?”

“Not yet.” He sighed. “I keep hopin’, but it hasn’t happened yet. My mama said that when her grandmother died, she saw her standing at the end of her bed one night and then she was gone. She always thought that her granny was telling her that she was happy and not to worry. So what’s happened out there that you just about fainted?”

“I saw someone, but it wasn’t a ghost. He was very real. Though I wasn’t expectin’ to see him ever again,” she answered.

Zed peeked out the window and waved.

“Would that someone be Wyatt?” He rubbed his chin. “He’s here a lot. He missed a few years after his granddad passed. He finished school and went to college. Got him one of them fancy degrees in some highfalutin thing, but decided that he didn’t like livin’ in the big city. He come back to Lindale and started his grandpa’s old business. Lot like you’re doin’.”

“And he’s here every year?” Harper asked.

“Yep. About every week during the spring and summer.” He lined up several meat patties on the grill. “We make our money off return customers and word of mouth. Annie always said that was better than placin’ an ad in the newspaper. Why’d you ask about Wyatt?”