The Barefoot Believers Page 3

  “Somebody had to step in and take charge of you.” Jo lowered her foot and finally moved back enough so that Kate could swing her legs and her cane out the door. “You can’t drive. You can’t work. You can barely walk. Face it, Kate, you are totally dependent on me.”

  People liked to say they looked remarkably alike, always adding—for being complete opposites.

  Jo didn’t see it. The alike part. The opposites, that she understood to the depths of her being.

  Yes, they both had the vivid green eyes of their mother’s family. And they stood exactly the same height, barefoot. But Jo made it a point never to go barefoot, so that hardly counted. Where Jo had fair skin and natural blond hair—grown by naturally blond women in some distant Nordic country and naturally woven to the hair on Jo’s scalp—Kate had their father’s coloring. Dark blond hair with sun streaks, a dark tan from years of that outdoorsy life she loved so much, not to mention her dark sense of humor.

  “Totally dependent on you? Where is Mom and her car when I need them? Maybe I can lie on the pavement and she can just finish me off.” Kate gave a wry, throaty laugh. Just the thing to take the edge off her cutting remark. Of course.

  Jo extended her hand to assist her sister up and out of the car. “Mom has hunkered down with one of her friends in her old condo building. I don’t think we have to worry about her getting up to anything too ambitious until you’re back on your feet.”

  “I am on my feet.” She slapped Jo’s hand away, tried to stand then staggered backward.

  Jo caught her.

  She winced.

  This time she accepted the assistance with a heavy sigh, making it clear she did not like the situation, not one bit. “This is just temporary, you know. Three weeks, tops.”

  “Three weeks?”

  Three weeks. The same amount of time Jo had until her own little house of cards would collapse around her. Instantly Jo saw that as one of those good news/bad news deals. The bad news was that she had three weeks to try to salvage her career and any scrap of self-worth she still possessed. The good news was that if she spent that time taking care of Kate, she probably wouldn’t mind facing the end of her world quite so much.

  She stepped in and anchored her feet to provide added support as Kate struggled to get stable on her feet. Foot. “Is that what the doctor told you? Three weeks?”

  Kate mumbled something.

  “What?” Jo cocked her head. “I don’t believe I heard that.”

  “Months. The surgeon said three months before I could put my full weight on it for any length of time. If I have the other surgeries that he seems to think I am going to need…if I want to, you know, not walk with a limp and cane the rest of my life.”

  “If you have the surgery that will save your foot? There’s some doubt?” Jo pulled her sister up until they stood shoulder to shoulder and yet still could not see eye to eye.

  “Without the surgery I might be able to be back at work in a few weeks.”

  “And suffer so much damage that you might cut your career short by a few years? Not to mention the effect of not taking care of yourself and your general health and…” she paused to pointedly clear her throat “…well-being. Doesn’t the Bible say something about physician heal thyself?”

  “I refuse to take any guff from you on making choices that I should know better than to make.” Kate raised her head and narrowed her eyes at the sleek white, impersonal building before them. “Realtors who live in rented apartments and all that.”

  Yes, the thirty-five-year-old fireball, noted as one of the city’s “Realtors To Watch” in a sidebar for an article on the boom market in Southern City Lifestyles, did not actually own her own home. She had bought and flipped several houses and condos in the last four years but she had never lived in any of them. She’d find something she thought would make her happy, move in, paint, wallpaper, remodel, whatever it took, and the next thing she knew, she looked around her and realized she wasn’t happy. So she’d go on the prowl again for a home, a haven, a…a…a…

  It would help if she had any idea what it was she was really looking for. But to do that, she’d have to slow down long enough to examine her life and figure out what was missing.

  “Are we going to hang out in your parking lot all day or are we going to actually make some use of this ritzy, three-hundred-dollar-shoe equivalent of an apartment of yours?”

  Slow down? Examine her life? Like that was going to happen anytime soon!

  “Don’t pick on that apartment too much. It’s going to be your headquarters for the next few weeks.” She took a few steps backward, guiding her sister one hobble at a time. “Months if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Again. Not taking guff from you on pushing myself too hard.” Kate made it up the walk, using the cane and sheer willpower.

  Before Jo could launch an argument, or even come up with one, her cell phone bleated out the opening notes of the old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, “Our House.” Luckily it did not blare out the lyrics that spoke of finding love and home. Apropos, Jo had thought, to her work. Yet so ironic to her personal life.

  But irony was not what made Jo wince at her insistent ring tone.

  “If you want to get that call, I can manage on my own.” Kate took a step toward the sleek brass-and-glass door and winced.

  “If it’s important they can leave a message.” Jo swept in and placed her hand on her sister’s back more to provide a place to fall than to take control.

  “You’re a good sister.”

  Jo only felt a twinge of guilt that she let Kate think family love had motivated her refusing to answer the phone. While she had no idea, without checking, who might be on the other end of that call and what they would want from her, she did know it wouldn’t be good. And unlike her sister, she would have no one to hold her up when the time came for her to take a fall.

  Love. Fear. Guilt. At least she was acting out of some emotion and not just a blind sense of duty, right?

  They made their way through the lobby and into the elevator. Then down the hallway…At least, Jo made it down the hallway.

  Kate hung back, leaning on her cane and breathing hard.

  “I should have rented a wheelchair,” Jo said, even as she pulled her keys from her purse. “Let me unlock the door then I’ll come back and get you.”

  “I am not helpless,” Kate snapped, her usually friendly features lined with pain. She slumped against the wall for support.

  Jo rushed to her. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be out of the hospital?”

  “So sayeth the insurance company,” Kate joked.

  “And your doctor?”

  “I am a doctor.” Kate grimaced.

  “Truth, Kate.”

  Kate took a deep breath.

  Her silence fueled Jo’s suspicions.

  “We don’t have many traditions in our family, Kate. For that matter we don’t even have much of a family. But when it mattered, you and I have always spoken the truth to each other. It’s all we have.”

  Kate nodded then exhaled in a long, low breath. “The truth is that my doctor thinks I’ve gone to the beach house.”

  “The beach…? You mean that ratty old cottage in Florida?”

  “Hey, that ratty old cottage in Florida provided us with some of the wonderful experiences of our lives.”

  “You mean those vacations when we were kids?”

  “No, I mean the rental money that paid for Mom to take a real vacation—away from us—once a year after we grew up.”

  “Be sweet,” Jo warned with a laugh. They loved their mom with all their hearts, neither of them doubted that. She had done all she could to protect and nurture them—whether they needed it or not. She mothered them well with the underlying understanding—not unlike an electrical current that if exposed could wreak havoc—that Jo and Kate never needed to be mothered. They called this good daughtering.

  Dodie needed them to need her. What an awesome responsibility to
place on already emotionally shaky children. So Jo could forgive Kate for joking about the blessed break Dodie’s vacation gave them. Because she understood it and because joking was the only way they dared broach the subject.

  The thought of precarious subjects brought Jo instantly back to the real topic at hand. “Why would your doctor think you’d gone to the cottage in Florida?”

  “Oh, the usual reasons.”

  “To moon over Vince Merchant?” If Kate insisted on giving nonanswers, Jo felt it completely within her rights as a little sister to respond with something Kate would have to react to.

  “Vince Mer—Whatever made you think of him?” Kate, still leaning against the wall, twisted her upper body and gazed into the gold reflective elevator doors. “Of all the memories of that place, the cottage, the vacations, the sand in our shoes…our shorts…our hair…our ears—”

  “I get it, sand.”

  “And, um, surf. And so many things connected to that place. Why, at the mention of Florida, would you go straight to Vince Merchant?”

  “I’ll answer that if you will.” Jo smirked just a little. “But then, I guess, if you could answer it, then I wouldn’t have to.”

  “Do not start, Jo. I have let go of that man. Of that time. It was a lifetime ago. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jo murmured at yet another evasive reply, the keys in her hand jangling as they went sliding along in her search for the right one.

  “Besides, there is no way Vince Merchant ended up in Santa Sofia,” Kate said so softly as she stared at the unblinking image of herself.

  What was up with Kate? Jo paused to marvel. Refusing surgery. Misleading her doctor. After all these years to have that response to the mention of Vince. Was she about to run again? Why? And where could she go to escape the hurt she carried always in her heart?

  “So tell me…” Jo drew a deep breath, considered the odds of getting a straight answer from her sister and asked instead, “Just why would your doctor think you would go to Florida?”

  “Oh, you know.” Kate looked down. Her shoulders rose and fell. “To rest. To relax. To rejuvenate.”

  “This doctor you’re talking about?” She churned the key in the lock and pushed the door open with one shoulder before turning to face her sister and ask, “Has he ever actually met you?”

  “Funny,” Kate droned, limping past and into the nearly empty front room. “And yes, he did meet me. Even made rounds while I was in the hospital and formed some pretty strong opinions of me.”

  “I’ll just bet.” Jo moved inside, but not fully. She hung back by the open door, halfheartedly wishing she could slip into the hallway alone, take one fortifying deep breath before she and her sister became roomies for who knew how long.

  Kate managed a rather pitiful-looking grin. “Why else do you think I told him I planned to go out of state for an extended recovery period?”

  “You lied?” All right, that shocked her. Kate was more perfect than Mary Poppins, after all.

  “I did not lie,” Kate snapped in something that seemed like pain…or panic. She struggled to move forward with her cane and cast on the plush carpet.

  “You lied to get out of having a doctor pester you to make follow-up visits.” Jo took two hurried steps to lend support. “Visits that might save you from a lifetime of limping, I might add.”

  “Save your adding for that abacus you plan on buying.” Kate swatted away any attempt by Jo to aid her. “And don’t be so…literal.”

  Jo stood back and folded her arms. “Literal?”

  “Lying? It’s such a harsh word.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “I was thinking out loud.” The comeback came quick and sure, as if Kate had maybe rehearsed it in her head a few times trying to convince herself. “Mom was standing there telling my caregiver that she intended to make sure I didn’t spend any time at my practice, like she actually had that kind of influence with me, that kind of power over what I do with my time, that say-so about my work.”

  “And you couldn’t stand the idea of it. You wanted to run so you invented a place you could run to and told yourself that was wishful thinking, not an outright fib.”

  “Mom started it,” Kate protested. She attempted to put some of her weight on the foot in the large purple-and-white cast.

  She looked so small. So vulnerable. Now, in the unkind artificial tract lighting, the circles under her eyes seemed so dark and the usually taut skin on her face and neck, drawn. It gave the impression of Kate being older than her years and much more intense, if that was possible, and anything but happy.

  It made Kate look…

  Jo drew in her breath and held it.

  It made Kate look like their father.

  Not that Jo remembered him so much as she remembered pictures of him. Pictures that had long ago disappeared from their home and faded from her memory. There was one in particular of him with his hand on her shoulder. Kate stood nearby. Dad had insisted it be taken to show off his new truck—the truck their father would drive away in forever a few days after the picture was taken. But being Mom, she’d only gotten the front fender and a part of their family. If other photos had been taken that day, Jo could not recall. Her parents had fought. They’d always fought. And their dad had left.

  Now Jo looked at her sister and could see something familiar of him in her. It spooked her a little.

  No, given Kate’s suddenly uncharacteristic behavior and their father’s bitter betrayal, it spooked Jo a lot.

  Jo edged forward, her hands out.

  Kate sucked air through her gritted teeth, her shoulders drew up but she still motioned to Jo to keep back. She took a step, gasped then shifted her weight back onto the antique cane and exhaled, her shoulders drooping. “Anyway, when my surgeon asked me what I might do with my time off, I looked at him and I looked at Mom and I couldn’t help thinking about what she had said she planned to do and that I had promised I’d stop her from doing it, or doing anything so rash and—”

  “Kate!”

  The front door fell shut with a wham.

  “And I said I might go to Florida.” Kate didn’t even pause in her rambling. Step, gasp, shift. Rambling and shuffling. “Just like that. Might go to Florida. Now is that lying, really?”

  “Really? Yes, it is.” Jo tossed her keys into the bowl on the table by the door. She didn’t have to look to see if they landed. She heard the familiar clunk and the wobble caused by the one uneven table leg. Like everything else in her apartment, she had put it there for convenience on the day she’d moved in and had seen no reason to adjust or change anything about it since then.

  She had enough decorating and dressing places in her side business flipping properties. She had expended a lot of energy learning how to do that to ensure a fast sale with maximum profits. She had gotten so good at it she could turn a house in a matter of six weeks, a month if pressed or maybe…

  “Three weeks,” she muttered. “Given the right market.”

  Fast sale. Maximum profits. Beach house in Florida.

  Love. Fear. Guilt.

  Rest. Relaxation. Rejuvenation.

  Her goals and motivations as well as Kate’s stated needs clicked through her mind just like that and one by one she placed a mental tick in the box beside each one.

  Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

  “It most certainly is a lie. Unless…”

  Kate put her hand on the back of the love seat in the center of the sparse space. “Unless what?”

  Jo blinked. “Is it actually such a bad idea?”

  “Lying?”

  “Florida.”

  “Florida?”

  “The cottage.” Jo’s heels clacked soft and swift over the floor as she went to her sister’s side. “We’ve been saying we need to get down there and go through things. Decide what to do with it all, with the place.” Sell. That was the solution to her situation. One big sale, one sudden influx of cash and she’d be on top again
. “Perfect.”

  “It’s worth some thought, I guess. It would get me away from…” Instead of finishing her thought, Kate looked around the room, her expression sour.

  “Here.” Jo caught her sister by the elbow. “Let’s get you settled down and comfortable.”

  “Pick one.” Kate dumped her cane onto the love seat and hopped around the side of it. “I can be settled down or I can be comfortable. I can’t be both.”

  Jo knew what her always-restless sister meant but with this new idea burning through her thought process, she did not have time for empathy. “Sit. I’ll get you some water so you can take your meds and the TV remote so you can stick your foot up on the coffee table and yell at the world.”

  In a matter of minutes Jo’s French-manicured nails clattered over the keyboard of her laptop.

  Florida real estate.

  Property values.

  Length of time on the market.

  In a chair a few feet away, Kate flicked through the one-hundred-plus TV channels so fast that it created an almost strobe-light effect.

  Crime show.

  Crime show.

  Crime show.

  “If I have to spend the next three weeks watching this junk, I may go insane and do bodily harm to somebody.” Another click, this time to a commercial…for a crime show. “Fortunately with all these forensic-science shows, I’ll know how to do it without getting caught.”

  “Well, if you want to spare yourself the trouble of having to plan the perfect crime, there’s always Florida,” Jo said as she double clicked the mouse to scan yet another site on the hottest selling properties along the Gulf coast.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jo glanced up. “I, uh, it’s just that it’s been empty for two years now because no one rented it. Not sure what that means or what shape it’s in but this opportunity has presented itself….”

  “My losing the use of my foot is an opportunity?”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” It was a pat answer, but not an altogether glib one. Kate and Jo were women of faith. Not particularly well-tended or studied faith but both of them had accepted Christ as their personal Savior while still teens. And hadn’t Jo been praying and praying for some kind of resolution to the mess she had found herself in? Why couldn’t this be the answer?