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Shaking her head, she let herself out of the truck, but not before she heard his parting words.
“This might be one of those times you have to let someone else give you a hand.”
*
Juggling the laundrybasket full of warm clothes onto one hip, Alexis Harper freed a hand to dig out her cell phone screeching from the bottom. Pausing in the stairwell on her way back to her apartment on the third floor, she hesitated a moment before answering.
The way she always did when her sister’s ringtone chimed. Half the time, Keely called to interrogate her as if Alexis was still in high school. She’d ask questions about her job, her friends, her downtime, all carefully wrapped in politeness while she secretly tried to ferret out if Alexis was still indulging any risky behaviors.
Why didn’t she just come right out and ask?
Of course, the other fifty percent they had good conversations. Alexis liked hearing about Keely’s wildflower business, hoping against hope that her sister was finally focusing on her own dreams instead of wrapping herself in layers of denial about their family issues. On the third ring, she decided to hope for the best, and swiped to connect the call.
“Hey there,” she answered, shifting her grip on the laundry so she could continue up the narrow wooden stairs. “I’m on my way up from the basement, so the reception might be bad.”
For a moment before her sister spoke, Alexis could hear the distinct guitars of bluegrass music in the background. Funny how fast music could transport a person. The sound took her right back to the farmhouse kitchen beside her sister, helping peel potatoes or dry dishes while Keely brought order to the home in the daylight hours when their dad slept. For those brief times together, all had felt right with the world, even though their mom had abandoned them, and their dad had abdicated parenting for alcohol. Alexis had it easier in their house because of Keely. She understood that.
“Want me to call back another time?” Keely asked, always ready to defer her own needs to everyone else.
She loved her sister dearly, but it hurt Alexis whenever Keely chose to put herself last. Enabling was not okay.
“No,” she said more sharply than she’d intended. Taking a deep breath, she tried to watch her own behavior too, knowing they each had played a role in the dysfunction drama. Alexis wanted to break it. “Is everything okay at home?”
“Things are…okay.” The awkward cadence of the answer was more answer than the words themselves. Keely must have heard it too, because then she admitted, “Nate’s in town.”
The plot thickened. And in a far more interesting direction than she could have predicted.
“I wondered if he might go home after surgery.” Reaching the third floor of her apartment building, she used a hip to open the stairwell door. “Hang on a sec while I find my keys, okay?”
Setting down the laundry and the phone, she pulled the Houston Stars key ring from her back pocket before unlocking her place. Even though she’d taken the time to hang some photos around the small studio, it still didn’t feel like home with its view of a brick wall out the kitchen window and the utilitarian furnishings. So far, life in the big city hadn’t been as exciting as she’d hoped. When she wasn’t working an obscene number of hours each week, she found herself missing Hill Country. From the bluebonnet festival to the Christmas market, Last Stand had a charm that Houston didn’t come close to touching. She slid the basket inside with one foot, then bolted the door behind her.
“Okay, I’m back. So, have you seen him?”
Nate Ramsey, her sister’s ex-boyfriend, would always hold a special place in Alexis’s heart for giving Keely some much-needed happiness for a couple of years. She’d always thought it was a mistake her sister hadn’t jumped at the chance to get out of Last Stand at Nate’s side while he pursued his baseball career.
“Yes. Nate informed me that Dad sold Everett Ramsey some of the land my flowers are on.”
Indignation fired through her.
“He sold it?” Hadn’t the man done enough damage already without sabotaging Keely’s attempt to build a life on the little plot that still remained? “Without telling you? Doesn’t he know that your business keeps the roof over his head and food on his table?”
“I can’t imagine what he was thinking. I have to believe this happened before he sobered up, but I’ll find out more when I visit the county office in the morning.”
“You haven’t confronted Dad about it?” she shot back, picking up a cotton shirt that needed to go on a hanger. “The rat bastard. How dare he.”
Unlike Keely, she didn’t have the same urge to show him any respect just because he’d sired them.
For years, Alexis had been pushing Keely to take a tougher stance with their father, to put herself first. She’d twisted her arm into attending Al-Anon meetings and tried to support Keely’s quest for her own identity through her flower farm. But it hadn’t been enough. The need to go home and shake up the status quo in the Harper house of dysfunction was simmering. Especially since their dad had cleaned up his act just enough to pull off underhanded schemes like this shady land deal.
She set the cotton shirt down again, realizing she was only mangling it in her frustration.
Keely turned down the bluegrass music on her end of the call before she spoke again. “I’m going to talk to Dad. I just figured it would be easier to do when I was composed and had a few more facts.” She paused for a second before blurting, “But I didn’t call about that. Honestly, I just wanted to warn you that I’ve heard rumors of Nate starting a baseball camp in town for the Stars, and I don’t want you to get sucked into—”
“Seriously?” Her gaze flitted to the brick view that was her slice of life in Houston. “You’re worried about me? About Nate’s camp?” It took all of her effort not to point out that Keely was deflecting from the real problem at hand. Instead, she said, “A baseball camp run by a pro would be so good for the town.”
“Maybe so,” Keely sounded underwhelmed. Reluctant. “But just in case anyone at work approached you about doing physical therapy in Last Stand—”
“Do you think that’s a possibility?” Granted, the medical group she worked for took care of the team, but they saw other patients, too. Was it possible that kind of opportunity could come up through her job?
