AllFreeNovel
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“So it looks different, that’s why. To shake things up, that’s why. Must there be a logical reason for everything?”
“Just listen to you, lady lawyer. Since when aren’t you a stickler for logic?”
“Change is logical. And what’s with calling me lady lawyer?”
“I don’t know. I just did, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t do it again.” Anna edged out from behind the sagging sofa she’d picked up at a Bowery consignment shop the prior weekend. “Ugh! Why did I buy this gross-looking thing?”
“I have no idea. I mean, it sags. It tilts. And baby-poo brown isn’t one of my favorite colors.”
“Thank you. That really makes me feel better.”
“Hey, you asked. Here’s an idea. You take one end, I’ll take the other, we’ll drag it downstairs, put it at the curb—”
“We’d never move it. It weighs a ton. I had to pay the super fifty bucks to get it up here.”
“And it cost you how much?”
Anna sighed. “Fifty bucks.”
“So a hundred dollars for a pile of sagging baby poo when you already had a perfectly acceptable sofa?”
“It was ugly.”
“Not like this.” The sisters sank down on opposite ends of the offending piece of furniture and looked at each other. Isabella cleared her throat. “So, you gonna tell me what’s happening?”
“You know what’s happening. I have an interesting new client.”
“Excellent way to describe a nut who shot out all the windows in his ex’s apartment so he wouldn’t have to see her and her new boyfriend through them.” Izzy snorted. “Anybody break the news to him yet? That, hello, you can see through windows even better when the glass is gone?”
“And,” Anna said, choosing to ignore the remark, “in addition to an interesting new client, I have a new sofa. New for me, okay? This time tomorrow I’ll also have new paint on the walls. And let’s not forget the boots I bought last week.”
“Right. Not boots. Snow boots. And it’s still summer.”
“It’s the end of summer. That’s why they were on sale.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe they were on sale ’cause only my sister would be crazy enough to buy snow boots with five-inch heels.”
“Four-inch, and what’s so bad with me trying to make some changes in my life?”
“Nothing,” Isabelle said, “if you weren’t doing it to try and bury something you don’t want to think about.”
Anna snorted. “That’s crazy.”
“That’s accurate. Remember you asked me about psych 101? About sexual fantasies?”
“Isabella. I have no intention of—”
“There was more to psych 101 than that. For instance, chapter twelve of that oversize textbook, remember? Ahem. ‘A sudden flurry of change-centered activity is often symptomatic of a desire to obliterate memory of a distressing situation.’”
Anna stared at her sister. “You can remember reading that?”
Iz shrugged. “Heck, no. I just made it up. But see, I’m right. I can tell. Just look at your face.”
“Coffee,” Anna said briskly. She sprang to her feet and walked the six feet it took to reach the kitchen. “Get out the cream, would you? And the pink stuff.”
“Anna. You went to Italy. ‘I’ll be gone a couple of days,’ you said. Instead, you were gone a week. And when you got back, you looked like crap.”
