AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Handing Remmi a copy of I’m Not Me, Greta said, “Here you go. I figured you wouldn’t buy this, just on principle, but you need to read it.”
“I was going to stop by the bookstore tomorrow.”
“Saved you the trouble.” Greta poked a manicured fingernail on the cover. “Maybe you can figure out who’s behind it without getting a court order.” She laughed and glanced at a large framed picture of a stern-looking man that sat upon the desk he’d once used. Judge Duncan Emerson, her late husband, the “love of my life but definitely not my ‘soul mate,’ whatever drivel that is.” Turtles had followed them into the study and, spying Greta, looked up, then leaped onto the old woman’s lap.
“Oh, you,” Greta said, her eyes twinkling as she stroked him along his neck and nape, and the cat settled, purring loudly, onto Greta’s lap.
Remmi thanked her for the book, then walked past Greta’s bedroom, with its view of the back gardens, to circle around to the staircase in the foyer. There were two other ways to reach her suite on the top floor, either by the back stairs once used by the servants or by the exterior steps, a winding staircase once used as a fire escape. The old home had no elevator, only a creaky dumbwaiter, which no one had used in this century. She made her way past the unoccupied guest rooms on the second floor and up the final steps to the space she’d occupied for the better part of five years.
She set Greta’s copy of I’m Not Me on the coffee table and walked to the bank of windows to stare through watery glass that was over a hundred years old. Her view from this third-floor perch was incredible—from the bay on the east, over the peninsula, where the city lights winked brightly, to the Pacific stretching into the dark horizon. This rambling old manor was as much of a home as she’d had since she’d left Las Vegas twenty years earlier. She’d had many apartments in the intervening years, mostly dives, once in a rare while with a roommate, but after living with her aunt and uncle, she preferred to be alone.
CHAPTER 15
Remmi sank onto her couch and thought back about living with the Gibbs family. She’d hated everything about it.
From the get-go, Aunt Vera had forced Remmi to attend weekly Bible study on Wednesday evenings, as well as the Sunday services, where the sermons could not have been more boring.
Once Remmi had made the mistake of suggesting she would rather attend a nondenominational church, and Aunt Vera had nearly come unglued. When Remmi had pointed out that it was all the same God, Aunt Vera had given her a blistering to
ngue-lashing about sticking with family and faith and the little church they attended, where Reverend Weber, a personal friend, mind you, held services.
One memory rose to the surface. It had been late summer, and Aunt Vera had insisted Remmi learn what she referred to as “the basics,” which meant preparing Remmi to be a homemaker like she was—straight out of the 1950s. Remmi was not cool with that at all.
Aunt Vera had begun canning peaches one sweltering afternoon. She had been standing at the stove and, as always, was ready to impart knowledge. “Your mother,” she told Remmi, “well, she was a hedonist, always all about what made her feel or look good, never giving a thought to anything or anyone besides herself.”
“That’s not true,” Remmi had burst out. She’d been sitting at the battered kitchen table in the kitchen nook, making labels for the jars, and glancing out the window to the cloudless day beyond. The nook had a view of the driveway, twin lines of concrete leading to a sagging garage, where Uncle Milo kept an old sports car that was in pieces all over the cracked cement floor.
As Remmi had tried not to daydream about finding her mother and escaping her life here, Aunt Vera had been sweating over a mottled canner squatting on the largest burner, steam rising. The temperature was over a hundred outside, not a breath of a breeze to be had. The lawn had turned brown, the shriveled blades of grass bleached from the California sun, the tinder-dry shrubs and trees lining the drive having already lost their leaves. The too-small air-conditioning unit had been on the fritz again, and Aunt Vera had been waiting, somewhat impatiently, for Uncle Milo to return from his latest business trip and fix it.
“Mom cares about me,” Remmi had continued and swiped at the sweat beading on her forehead. One globule had hit the label she was working on, smearing the wording from her black Sharpie. She wadded the label up in her hand, crushing it in her fist. “And the babies. She loves them. She does! She’ll come back. Something just must’ve happened.” But it had already been over a year since Didi had driven away from Las Vegas in a piqued state of fury.
“Oh, honey . . .” Aunt Vera had taken the time to glance pityingly over her shoulder. “Maybe you should face the fact that she’s not—”
“She will!” Remmi had insisted, fighting the sting of tears. She wouldn’t break down with her aunt. Wouldn’t allow herself. Nor would she think for an instant that Didi might be dead. That horrid thought had seeped through her brain often, but she’d ignored it, wouldn’t dignify it. Even at night, when the oozing seemed darker and more foreboding, breeding nightmares that were dark and brutal—explosions rocking the still desert, fireballs climbing into the starlit heavens, blood drizzling over the tufted seats of the white Cadillac, and a baby crying somewhere in the darkness, sobbing loudly, while Remmi, her legs leaden, couldn’t find it.
So far, she’d managed to stuff her sorrow and fears deep inside and vowed never to reveal them. Not even when she woke up soaked in sweat from those hellish nightmares, a scream dying in her throat.
“She’ll be back,” Remmi insisted, repeating herself.
Aunt Vera had sighed over the steaming pot. “I suppose,” she’d allowed, though there had been a distinct lack of conviction in her tone. “But what I meant was that Edwina never thought beyond the materialistic, the here and now. Whether you want to face it or not, your mother was a narcissist, her head in the clouds. Where was she when Mom came down with cancer? Hmm? And when Dad was struggling, trying to make ends meet, in danger of losing the farm, was Edie around? No. She wasn’t about to give up her wild, showgirl life now, was she?” She stopped to blow her bangs from her eyes and mop a drop of sweat that ran from her hairline to her chin. “Not that your uncle was any better. You didn’t know him, of course, but your Uncle Billy was as bad as Edie, always carousing in high school, and then, the minute he got out, he joined up. The army. Ran away from his family. Barely came home when he got leave, let me tell you. Not until he got shot up in Iraq and came back with shrapnel in his hip. Then he was interested in the family, or at least what was left of the farm. It nearly killed Mom, let me tell you.” With a snort, she added, “Edie and Billy, not a lick of sense between them, and certainly not a drop of spirituality either!”
Remmi had jumped to Didi’s defense. “She goes to church on Christmas and Easter, and she even went to a psychic a couple of times.”
“Oh my Lord,” Vera declared, lips pursed, the silver cross dangling from a chain on her neck, glinting against her cleavage, her skin glazed with a sheen of perspiration. She’d been wearing a sleeveless blouse and shorts, her blond hair pulled into a short ponytail, her feet in flip-flops on the tile floor.
Earlier, Remmi had suggested they wait until a cooler day, and Vera had barked at her, reminding her the peaches were “ready” and that she couldn’t risk any of them rotting. “Waste not, want not,” she’d lectured Remmi, and the canning had begun.
Remmi had helped by peeling the dozens of peaches, but Aunt Vera was in charge of the water bath, filling the jars with syrup and peach halves, then placing the filled jars carefully on a rack in the huge canner.
She must’ve realized what she sounded like, so as soon as the jars were settled into the bath, Vera had turned to face Remmi. “I shouldn’t have been so harsh. It’s amazing to me how you did it—you know, got good grades and held a job—with Edwina as your only parent and her . . . different lifestyle. Even with the babies, you’ve managed to land scholarships and stay out of trouble.”
This was as much of an apology as Remmi was ever going to get, but she hadn’t known how to respond. Before she could mutter anything like “It’s okay” or “I know you and Mom didn’t get along,” a loud roar thundered through the open window. A dusty old Jeep with huge tires had careened into the driveway. Half a dozen teenage boys had been stuffed into the open-air Wrangler, all laughing and talking. Her cousins, Jensen and Harley, had been standing in the back of the rig and hanging onto the Jeep’s roll bar.
“Oh my,” Vera whispered as both of her sons leaped from the back of the vehicle. The second their bare feet hit the ground, the driver rammed his Jeep into reverse and, tires spinning, engine thundering, backed into the street and roared away.
Bare-chested, jeans hanging low on their hips, Jensen and Harley ran into the house, the scents of smoked cigarettes and guzzled beer clinging to them. Blond Jensen was a string bean with peach fuzz beginning to chase away his acne. Harley, a year and a half younger, was built like a spark plug and had wild, curly brown hair, a too-big nose that he might grow into, and squirrelly deep-set eyes that made him always look like he was hiding something, which he usually was. The two teenagers tried to act sober as they walked quickly through the kitchen, but Jensen wove and Harley careened into a cupboard and giggled, then followed his brother down a short hall to the bedroom they’d shared ever since Remmi had moved in. Jensen was right on his heels, yanking the door shut behind him.
“You two, get out here!” Vera yelled. She was still holding the pair of tongs she used to move the jars in the water bath. “You hear me?”
