A Dead Sister (Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery) by Anna Burke Read Free Book Online

e hated being called baby girl. It was so infantilizing.
    “I hear you, Mom. It just doesn’t feel okay, you know?”
    “I do know, Jessica.” The tone in her voice more serious. The moment passed, though, as her mother gushed. “Why don’t you get out of California for a while? Don’t even pack. Just grab your passport and get on a plane. Join us here in Monaco. We can get Giovanni to let us take the yacht out island-hopping. You haven’t been to Greece in years, Jessica. Or we could just tool around the Côte d'Azur, shopping. Giovanni is so busy these days, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, and I’d be glad for the company, baby girl.”
    ”There she goes again,” Jessica thought. The offer had begun to sound tempting until she hit her again with that baby girl thing. That’s how she felt around her mother, forever five years old. A force of nature, Alexis was like Sisyphus’ boulder, flattening anyone in her path. She would want Jessica to meet people, some of them handsome, young and not-so-young men. Before she could blink twice, her mother would have thrust her into the whirlwind that swirled around Alexis Baldwin-etc.-etc.-Bortoletto. Jessica just didn’t have the strength to hold her own right now, with her mother or her mother’s entourage. But could there be any doubt about where the shopping habit came from?
    “Mom, the offer is tempting, but I would be awful company right now. Maybe later in the summer, when the desert heat really sets in, I’ll take you up on the offer. Who knows, by then I might even be in a better mood.”
    “Okay, Jessica. Let Bernadette take care of you for a while. She’ll know what to do.” She had a wistful tone in her voice. “If you change your mind, the invitation is open. And, Jessica, you do know I love you, right?”
    “I know, Mom. I love you too.” With that, Jessica hung up the phone and called her dad. Unlike her mother, Hank Huntington had never remarried. As far as Jessica knew, there had not even been a close call. Every once in a while she would catch something in the news about a charity event or a groundbreaking ceremony involving her father or his development company. At those events, there were sometimes women on his arm or hovering in the background, smiling with admiration or affection. But he had never introduced her to any of them. If there was somebody else in his life after Alexis Baldwin, he kept it to himself.
    Her father’s reaction to the news about the split from Jim was different from her mother’s. Not so much in the content but in the tone of his response. Rather than telling her she was going to be okay, he asked . In that moment, she knew she would be, but sought his reassurance anyway. He confirmed that she was a tough cookie and would, no doubt, be just fine.
    He also surprised her. “Jinx, can I tell you something?” He hadn’t called her that in years. Not since she had figured out what the term jinx meant. As a befuddled “tween,” she had come to regard it not as a term of endearment, but as one of the possible reasons her family fell apart. Jinx was derived from her first and middle names, short hand for Jessica Alexis Huntington. It was a name that her dad had come up with when Jessica, at four or five, demanded to be given a nickname. That was after her parents tried to explain why some folks called her dad Henry and others called him Hank. The young Jessica had found t he whole thing rather troubling until she had a nickname of her own. She liked the way it sounded and introduced herself as Jinx for the next few weeks to anyone who would listen. It wasn’t until she hit the “terrible tweens” that she realized why so many adults had found it amusing when she had piped up with, “Hi, I’m Jinx, what’s your nickname?” At 11, she became convinced they heard “Hi, I’m a jinx ”, which is what she felt like at that point, a jinx at home and school.
    “Of course, Dad, go ahead.”
    “I never liked Jim Harper.