LITMIR.BIZ

       4

      Callie was still regarding the huge, newly arrived arrangement of flowers from Jason Kane with dismay when the phone rang. She could barely find it—for all the flowers had been crammed on every available surface over the week since she’d had lunch with the arrogant, pushy network president. She couldn’t imagine what good he thought this display of excess would accomplish. Maybe he hoped she had allergies that would eventually drive her out of her apartment and into his stupid show.

      “Yes, hello,” she said, then sneezed. Maybe she was allergic, dammit.

      “Callie?”

      Eunice, she thought with a sigh at the sound of her sister’s whining voice. “Yes.”

      “You sound funny, like your nose is all stopped up or something. You haven’t been crying again, have you?”

      Ironically, Callie realized she hadn’t shed a tear since her lunch with Jason Kane. It might be smart not to analyze that phenomenon too closely.

      “No,” she said, “but you sound as if you have been.”

      That was enough to encourage Eunice to launch into a familiar litany of her problems.

      “It’s Mother. She’s driving me to distraction, Callie. She tried to run the tractor this morning, even though I told her over and over that Tom would come by as soon as he’d finished our fields and plow hers.”

      “Has it occurred to you that perhaps she’d prefer to be independent, rather than relying on you and your husband?” It was the one area in which Callie could totally sympathize with her mother. She could imagine the kind of price tag that came with Eunice and Tom’s so-called help. Endless reminders of their generosity, no doubt.

      “Of course she’d rather be independent,” Eunice snapped. “That’s not the point. She can’t do the work. She’ll wind up having a heart attack or something. And the other day in town she practically ran over Mr. Casey because she won’t wear the glasses the doctor prescribed. She’s fallen twice. Sooner or later, she’s bound to break her hip. I’m scared to death she’s going to burn the house down because she gets so distracted when she’s cooking that she forgets all about whatever she’s left on the stove.”

      She heaved a put-upon sigh. “I’m telling you, Callie, I can’t take it anymore. You have to come home. She cannot be left in that big old house alone. And she certainly can’t come here. Tom would have a fit.”

      Callie barely resisted the desire to scream, even though she suspected Eunice had plenty of cause to be anxious.

      “It wouldn’t work for the two of us to be under the same roof, either,” she explained with careful patience. “In case you’ve forgotten the cold wars waged before I left home—Mother and I have never gotten along. She blames me... Well, who knows what she blames me for? Her whole miserable life, I suppose.” She couldn’t help the rare note of confusion that crept into her voice with the admission.

      “I swear to you, Callie, if you don’t come back and take some responsibility for this, I’ll...I’ll...”

      “What, Eunice? What will you do?” Callie prodded, tired of the guilt her sister had been heaping on her ever since the day she’d left Iowa.

      It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mother. She did. But Regina Gunderson had not done anything to allow that love to flourish. Occasionally, in the darkest moments of the night, Callie regretted that their relationship wasn’t stronger, but she’d tired of making efforts that were never returned. She’d long since stopped trying to figure out exactly what she was to blame for. She’d just accepted that the gulf between her and her mother was wider than any Iowa river at flood stage.

      “I’ll pack her bags and send her to New York, that’s what I’ll do,” Eunice threatened.

      Callie sucked in her breath, stunned by the possibility that Eunice might very well do as she’d said. “That’s blackmail,” she accused.

      “You bet it is. I’m telling you I am at the end of my rope. It would be one thing if she were the least little bit grateful, but she’s not. Tom’s about had it, too, and you know what a saint he’s been about helping out ever since Daddy died. I’m not ruining my marriage over this.”

      It was not the first time Eunice had declared her marriage on the brink of disaster. If it wasn’t their mother’s demanding, ungrateful attitude, then it was the failure of the corn crop or the lousy supper Eunice had fixed because she was too tired to stand in front of the stove for an hour.

      Callie could have told her that Tom Foster was a selfish pig, who liked to throw his weight around just to keep his wife in a constant state of terror, but she kept silent. That was one realization her sister was going to have to come to all on her own. She wouldn’t welcome Callie’s observations or her advice.

      “Give me a couple of days,” she said. “I’ll think of something to help Mother.”

      Jason Kane’s job offer flashed through her mind. The money would offer a solution, a way to pay for a competent farmhand, she thought, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She was not an actress. It was absurd to think about wasting all of her education, all of her experience in business, to prance around playing a cop.

      Maybe she was more Regina Gunderson’s daughter than she’d ever realized. She could just imagine her mother’s reaction to her choosing a frivolous career like acting, rather than something solid and dependable. In their family the sternest of work ethics had prevailed. A career in make-believe hardly qualified.

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