LITMIR.BIZ

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into a battered pickup truck and drove away.

      Hold on, her inner voice said. You’re being too touchy, my girl.

      Which was true. What was the sense in getting hot under the collar at the remarks of a man she’d never see again after tomorrow? Besides, in less than twenty-four hours, Susannah planned to be sitting on an airplane with Roger, heading for sun and sand and more than a week of relaxation. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize a wonderful vacation.

      Too bad Roger doesn’t look like Joe Santori, said that pesky inner voice again, breaking into her mental picture of softly waving palm trees. I’ll bet he’s got a body built for a bathing suit.

      Susannah blushed at the thought and abruptly pulled herself together. She marched toward the kitchen, determined to have a shoot-out with her grandmother.

      “Granny Rose, I can’t believe you’d embarrass me in front of a perfect stranger,” she lectured, once again entering the kitchen. “What in the world possessed you to think I’d have any interest whatsoever in a man like— Oh, God! Granny Rose!”

      Susannah gasped and rushed to her grandmother, who was slumped over the sink, weakly grasping at the counter to stay on her feet. Just as Susannah reached her side, the elderly woman lost consciousness and slid limply into Susannah’s arms. Lowering her grandmother to the floor, Susannah cried, “Oh, Granny Rose!”

      She cradled Rose’s head in her lap and fanned her grandmother’s ashen face with a dish towel, her own heart thumping madly in her chest.

      “Please, please, let her be all right,” Susannah prayed. “Granny Rose? Can you hear me?”

      A full minute passed—it felt like a week, at least—before Rose’s eyes flickered. A hint of color began to bloom in her cheeks, and she opened her eyes. “Suzie?”

      “Thank heavens!”

      Gradually Rose’s eyes focused, and she blinked. “What happened?”

      “You fainted, I think. I was only gone for a minute or two, and when I came back, you—”

      “I remember now. I blacked out. I was reaching for a casserole dish in that cupboard, and I—I—” Consternation filled Rose’s expression, and she clutched weakly at Susannah’s hand.

      “Don’t talk,” Susannah commanded, holding tight. “Just rest quietly for a moment. Then I’ll call the paramedics.”

      “Is Joe still here?”

      “No, he just left. I’m here now.”

      Rose frowned weakly. “You should go on your trip, Suzie.”

      “Nonsense,” Susannah said. “The Caribbean will always be there.”

      “But Roger—”

      “Roger won’t mind. He knows how important you are to me, Granny Rose. He’ll want me to stay here as long as I’m needed. I want to be sure you’re going to be okay.”

      “But you’re too busy—”

      “Hush.” Susannah hugged her grandmother. “I’m never too busy to take care of you, Granny Rose.”

      * * *

      JOE POINTED his rattletrap truck down the street and headed for his own home, just a couple of blocks away. Snow swirled across his windshield, but he knew his way around Tyler as well as a native, so the trip wasn’t treacherous.

      Joe Santori liked Tyler, Wisconsin. After growing up in Chicago and attending trade school and, later, engineering courses there, he’d been lured from the city by a job offer from the Ingalls Farm and Machinery Company at a time when he’d needed a change.

      He’d never thought of himself as a small-town kind of guy. Despite years of hounding by his wife, Marie, who had wanted to raise their family somewhere other than the streets of a big city, Joe had resisted leaving the Windy City. But when Marie died of ovarian cancer, Joe decided to make the change she had always wanted.

      He’d applied for the position with Ingalls Farm and Machinery before he was even sure he wanted to leave Chicago behind. But things had worked out well indeed, and Joe was glad he’d brought Gina to the rolling hills of Wisconsin.

      For Joe, the culture shock had been tremendous at first. Wisconsin people didn’t lock their back doors, and they sometimes left their cars running while they dashed into the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. It had taken him a while to relax and get over his big-city paranoia.

      But his daughter blended into the small-town milieu very easily. Perhaps because she was a motherless child, Gina had been an instant hit in the neighborhood, a darling of families up and down the street. At the age of six, she had learned to run out to the sidewalk after breakfast to find playmates to ride tricycles with until noon. Now nearly fifteen, Gina led the busy life of a teenager, complete with track-team practice, Ski Club, pickup games of street hockey and baseball—and her dreaded piano lessons, the only concession to femininity Gina would allow.

      Joe’s only regret had to do with his wife, Marie. She would have loved the town, and he often wished he’d brought her to Tyler before her illness. He took consolation in the idea that she was watching from above and approved his choice of towns in which to raise Gina.

      Joe pulled his truck into the driveway alongside the tall Victorian house on Church Street, just four blocks from the town square. He noticed the kitchen light was on, so he walked across the snow-dusted driveway and let himself in the back door, stomping slush from his boots and shaking the snow from his parka.

      “No way, Gramps,” Gina was saying into the telephone. “You couldn’t pay me to be a cheerleader! It’s so stupid cheering for a bunch of stupid boys when I could be playing ball myself. Besides, I hate to wear skirts.”

      Fourteen-year-old Gina lay flat on her back on the kitchen linoleum, her sneakered feet propped on the counter above, looking just as tomboyish as ever in her torn jeans and rumpled baseball shirt. She’d pinned the phone to her ear with her shoulder, leaving both hands free to braid her ponytail into a tight plait while she talked. When Gina spotted her father entering the house, she waggled her foot at him without breaking off her phone conversation.

      “Forget it, Gramps,” she said into the receiver. “You can’t convince me it would be fun. I don’t care if Mom was the captain of the squad in her school. It’s demeaning to women. My piano teacher said so.”

      Joe opened the refrigerator and took out a quart of chocolate milk. For some reason, he wanted to enjoy the taste of Rose Atkins’s hot cocoa all over again—and cold chocolate milk would have to do. He poured the last three inches into a jelly glass decorated with cartoon characters and listened to Gina’s conversation with her grandfather in Brooklyn.

      He was glad Marie’s parents kept in touch with their granddaughter, despite the miles that separated them. Every summer, Gina traveled east to be with her grandparents, and Joe tried to invite Marie’s family as well as his own mother to visit as often as possible. Gina needed an extended family to keep her grounded, he felt.

      Gina sighed dramatically. “Yeah, okay, Gramps. I love you, too. I gotta go, all right? Give my love to Nana. Bye.”

      Without moving from the floor, she tossed the receiver to Joe, who hung it up. “Holy smoke,” she groaned, covering her face with her hands as if holding back tremendous suffering. “When are they going to realize I’m not going to be just like Mom was? Now it’s cheerleading!”

      Joe grinned, leaning against the counter to drink his milk. “Your mom looked good in that short skirt. It didn’t demean her as far as I could see.”

      “What do you know?” Gina asked witheringly. “You’re a guy. A little old, maybe, but still a guy.”

      “Thanks, I think.”

      “Oh, Dad, you know what I mean.”

      “Sure. What’s

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