LITMIR.BIZ

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harsh.” Keely’s face was as white as flour.

      Ella blinked, as if she wasn’t quite aware of what she was saying. She stared blankly at Carly. “What’s harsh?”

      Carly winced as Keely got to her feet and began clearing the table without saying a word.

      She carried empty plates into the kitchen, trying desperately not to let the women see her cry. Behind her, she heard murmuring, which grew louder, and then her mother’s voice arguing. She went out into the cold night air in her shirtsleeves, tears pouring down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the front yard, stopping at the railing that looked out over Comanche Wells, at the rolling pastureland and little oasis of deciduous trees that shaded the fenced land where purebred cattle grazed. It was a beautiful sight, with the air crisp and the moon shining on the leaves on the big oak tree that stood in the front yard, making it look as if the leaves had been painted silver. But Keely was blind to the beauty of it. She was sick to her stomach.

      She heard the phone ring in the house, but she ignored it. First Boone’s fierce antagonism and the argument over Bailey and the ex-fiancée’s taunts the night before, and then her mother’s horrible assertions tonight. It was the worst two days of Keely’s recent life. She didn’t want to go back in. She wanted to stay out in the cold until she froze to death and the pain stopped.

      “Keely?” Carly called from the back door. “It’s Clark Sinclair. He wants to speak to you.”

      Keely hesitated for a moment. She turned and went back inside without meeting Carly’s eyes or looking toward the dining room where her mother sat finishing her drink.

      She picked up the phone and said “Hello?” in a subdued tone.

      “The old girl’s giving you hell, is she?” Clark mused. “How about going out? I know it’s late notice, but I just got in from Jacksonville and I want to talk to somebody. Winnie’s working late at dispatch, and God knows where Boone’s off to. How about it?”

      “Oh, I’d really like that,” Keely said fervently.

      “Need an escape plan, do we? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

      “I’ll be ready. I’ll wait for you on the front porch.”

      “God, it must be bad over there tonight!” he exclaimed. “I’ll hurry, so you don’t catch cold.” He hung up. So did Keely.

      “Got a date?” Ella drawled, coming to the doorway in a zigzag with her highball glass still in her hands. It was empty now. “Who’s taking you someplace?”

      Keely didn’t answer her. She went down the hall to her room and closed and locked the door behind her.

      “I told you it was a mistake to tell her that,” Carly said plaintively. “You’ll be sorry tomorrow when you sober up.”

      “Mistake to tell her what?” Ella muttered. “I need another drink.”

      “No. You need to go to bed and sleep it off. Come on.” Carly led her down the hall to her own bedroom, pushed her inside and closed the door behind them. “How could you tell her that, Ella?” she asked softly as she helped her friend down onto the big double bed with its expensive pink comforter.

      “I don’t care,” Ella said defiantly. “She’s in my way. I don’t want her here. I never did.”

      “She does all the housework and all the cooking,” Carly said in one of her rare moments of compassion. “She works all day and sometimes half the night for her boss, and then she comes home and works like a housekeeper. You don’t appreciate how much she does for you.”

      “I could hire somebody to do all that.” Ella waved the idea away.

      “Could you afford to pay them?” Carly retorted.

      Ella frowned. She was hard put just to pay utilities and buy groceries. But she didn’t reply.

      Carly eyed her quietly. “If you push her, she’ll leave. Then what will you do?”

      “I’ll do my own housework and cooking,” Ella said grandly.

      Carly shook her head. “Okay. It’s your life. But you’re missing out.”

      “On what?” Ella muttered.

      “On the only family you have,” Carly replied in a subdued tone. “I don’t have anybody,” she added. “My parents are dead. I had no siblings. I was married, but I was never able to have a child. My husband is dead, too. You have a child, and you don’t want her. I’d have given anything to have a child of my own.”

      “You can have Keely,” Ella said, laughing. “I’ll give her to you.”

      Carly moved toward the door. “You can’t give people away, Ella.” She looked back. “You don’t really have anybody, either.”

      “I have men.” Ella laughed coldly. “I can have any man I want.”

      “For a night,” her friend agreed. “Old age is coming up fast, for both of us. Do you really want to drive your only child away? She’ll marry someday and have children of her own. You won’t even be allowed to see your grandchildren.”

      “I’m not having grandchildren,” Ella shot back. “I’m not going to be old. I’m only in my late thirties!”

      Carly laughed. “You’re heading toward fifty, Ella,” she reminded her friend. “All the beauty treatments in the world aren’t going to change that.”

      “I’ll have a face-lift,” the other woman returned. “I’ll sell more land to pay for it.”

      That was unwise. Ella had already sold most of the land her family had left her. If she sold the rest, she was going to be hard-pressed just to pay bills. But Carly could see that it did no good to argue with her.

      “Good night,” she told Ella.

      Ella made a face at her, collapsed on the pillow and was asleep in seconds. Carly didn’t say anything else. She just closed the door.

      Keely put on a pair of brown corduroy slacks and a beige turtleneck sweater and ran a brush through her thick, straight blond hair. She hoped Clark didn’t have an expensive date in mind. She couldn’t dress for it. She threw an old beige Berber coat over her clothes and grabbed her purse.

      True to his word, Clark pulled up in the yard in exactly ten minutes, driving his sports car.

      Carly came out of Ella’s bedroom just as Keely was leaving.

      “Is she asleep?” Keely asked dully.

      “Yes.” Carly was worried, and it showed. “She should never have said that to you,” she added. “She loved you when you were a baby. You wouldn’t remember, you were too little, but I do. She was so happy…”

      “So happy that she now treats me this way?” Keely asked, hurt.

      Carly sighed. “She was different after your father left. She started drinking then, and it’s just gotten worse year after year.” She saw that she wasn’t getting through to the younger woman. “There are things you don’t know about your parents, Keely,” she said gently.

      “Such as?”

      Carly shook her head. “That’s not my place to tell you.” She turned away. “I’m going home. She’ll sleep until morning.”

      “Lock the door when you leave, please,” Keely said.

      “I’m leaving now. You can lock it.” Carly got her purse and stopped just as the door closed behind the two women.

      “I’m as bad as she is, sometimes,” the older woman confessed quietly. “I shouldn’t make fun of the way you are, and neither should she. But you don’t fight back, Keely. You must learn to do that. You’re nineteen. Don’t spend the rest of your life knuckling under,

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