LITMIR.BIZ

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long time. Perhaps it’d be better if I visited the store.” Bethanne’s gaze rose to meet her daughter’s.

      “Give me the phone,” Annie demanded and without waiting for a response, grabbed it from her.

      “Yes, that sounds great. Sign her up,” Annie ordered. She reached for a pad and paper and wrote down the details. “She’ll be there.” Half a minute later, Annie replaced the portable phone.

      “You signed her up for a class?” Andrew asked.

      “Yup.”

      “I, ah …” Bethanne suddenly felt panicked about spending the money. “Listen, this might not be such a good idea, after all, because—”

      Her daughter cut her off. “You’ll be learning to knit socks.”

      “Socks?” Bethanne cried, vigorously shaking her head. “That’s far too complicated for me.”

      “Mom,” Andrew said, “you used to knit all the time, remember?”

      “Socks aren’t difficult, according to the shop owner,” Annie continued. “Her name’s Lydia Hoffman and she said they’re actually quite simple.”

      “Yeah, right,” Bethanne muttered.

      “You’re going, Mom, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

      “You’re going,” Andrew echoed.

      Apparently their roles had reversed, although this was news to Bethanne. It must’ve happened while she wasn’t paying attention.

      4

      CHAPTER

       COURTNEY PULANSKI

      In Courtney’s opinion, this entire plan of her father’s was ridiculous and unfair. Okay, so she’d gotten into some minor trouble talking back to her teachers and letting her grades drop. It could’ve been a whole lot worse—like if the police ever found out who’d started that Dumpster fire four years ago. Who could blame her, though? Her mother had just died and Courtney was lost, angry, confused. She was doing better—not that she was over it. She’d never get “over it,” despite what her more clueless friends suggested. But in time she’d straightened herself out and worked hard to salvage her high-school years and now this. This!

      Her senior year of high school would be spent with her Grandma Pulanski in Seattle. While the kids she’d grown up with all her life graduated together, she’d be stuck halfway across the country. Courtney loved her grandmother, but she couldn’t imagine living with her for an entire year.

      There was no one else. No other place for Courtney to go while her father was in Brazil working as an engineer on a bridge-building project. Where he was going wasn’t safe for a teenage girl, or so he insisted.

      Jason, her oldest brother, was in graduate school and had a job teaching summer classes. Her sister, Julianna, was a college junior; she was working, too, at a vacation lodge in Alaska. Courtney was the youngest. College expenses for her brother and sister kept adding up. Plain and simple, her father needed the money; otherwise, he would’ve waited until Courtney had graduated from high school. Except that when she did, there wouldn’t be much likelihood of getting a scholarship. Unfortunately her grades weren’t the greatest and her chances of receiving an enter-college-free card were about the same as winning the lottery. In other words, her dad would be stuck paying for her, too. Spending the year in Seattle was the obvious solution.

      Everything would’ve been different if her mother hadn’t died in that freak car accident. It’d happened four years ago and still felt like yesterday.

      “Courtney,” her grandmother called from the foot of the stairs. “Are you awake?”

      “Yes, Grandma.” There was no way she could sleep in with the television blaring at five o’clock in the morning. Her grandmother needed hearing aids but refused to believe it. Everyone mumbled, according to Vera Pulanski. Everyone in the whole world!

      “I have breakfast cooking,” her grandmother shouted.

      Courtney stared up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

      “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

      She’d been with her grandmother for exactly a week and this was the seventh day in a row that they’d had this same conversation.

      “I’ll eat something later,” Courtney promised. The thought of dry scrambled eggs made her want to gag, but that was how her grandmother cooked them. She had all these ideas from television about what was good for a teenager and what wasn’t. Apparently, the only way to prepare anything safely was to cook the hell out of it. As a result, her grandmother’s scrambled eggs tasted like rubber. Not that she’d ever eaten rubber, but she was convinced these would qualify.

      “I hate to throw food away.”

      “I’m sorry, Grandma.” With all the meals she’d skipped since she arrived, Courtney figured she should’ve lost weight. She hadn’t. The scale had glared accusingly up at her that very morning. Fresh from the shower and completely naked, she’d stepped onto the bathroom scale, a relic if there ever was one. She’d closed her eyes, then peered down at the numbers and those ridiculously tiny lines between them. Her grandmother didn’t seem to know about digital. Not only hadn’t Courtney lost weight, but it looked as if she’d gone up a pound. She wanted to weep. Starting a new school would be bad enough, but facing strangers while she was fat was even worse.

      “Courtney?” Again her grandmother yelled at her from the bottom of the stairs.

      “Yes, Grandma.” Vera obviously wasn’t backing off this morning.

      “I’m going out for a while. I need to run a few errands.”

      “Okay, Grandma.”

      “I want you to come with me.”

      Sighing heavily, Courtney sat up, thumped her feet onto the floor and let her shoulders slump forward. “Can I stay here?” she pleaded. After her shower, she’d put her pajamas back on, since she couldn’t think of a reason to get dressed. Not a good reason, anyway.

      “I’d really like it if you joined me. You spend far too much time in your room.”

      “All right, Grandma.”

      “What did you say?”

      Rising slowly, Courtney went over to the doorway and shouted, “I’ll be right down.”

      Smiling, her grandmother nodded. “Good.”

      Vera Pulanski was a wonderful woman and Courtney had always enjoyed her visits to Chicago. But this was different. She’d never had to live with someone this old before. Everything in the house would sell as an antique on eBay.

      With a decided lack of enthusiasm, she pulled on her jeans and an oversize black T-shirt that had her dad’s company logo on the front. When she’d walked down the stairs Vera smiled sweetly and stopped her on the last step. Raising her arms, her grandmother cupped Courtney’s face as she studied her.

      “You’re a beautiful girl.”

      Courtney responded with a weak smile.

      “You’re the apple of my eye, my youngest grandchild.”

      “Yes, Grandma.”

      “I’ve always regretted that Ralph didn’t live long enough to know you.”

      Her grandfather had died when Courtney was a few months old. “Me, too.”

      “Now, what I’m about to say is only because I love you.”

      Courtney bristled, bracing herself for another lecture. “Grandma, please, I know I need to lose weight. You don’t have to say it, all right?” Courtney couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of her voice. It wasn’t as if she could

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