A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White Read Free Book Online Page B

shirt, her blond hair pulled into a girlish ponytail that twisted into the shape of an S. “Let me take your coat and get you a towel.”
    Ruthie was standing in the front hall by the marble table with the antique music box, watching. Mr. Parker put down his brown leather briefcase before sliding out of his coat. She knew that a copy of her parents’ will was inside that briefcase, the document that would soon reveal her future. Hers and Julia’s.
    “Sweetie, can you run upstairs and get Mr. Parker a towel?” asked Aunt Mimi.
    “Sure,” Ruthie said, pushing a lock of her straight brown hair behind her ear, which was newly pierced, the gold starter ball still the only earring she was able to wear. You had to wear the starterball for six weeks, and her ears had only been pierced for five, since her thirteenth birthday last February 22. That had been one of Naomi’s few unbendable rules: no pierced ears until the girls were teenagers. Naomi herself never pierced her ears. She always wore clip-ons, which Ruthie and Julia would divide among themselves when they sorted through Naomi’s “costume” jewelry. The real stuff, the three gold bracelets, the emerald necklace and earrings, the long chains embedded with tiny diamonds, the rings, all would be split up according to the will.
    Ruthie walked up the front stairs. The banister scrolls were made of wrought iron. Once when Ruthie was four she put her head between two of them and got stuck there. Naomi tried everything to get Ruthie out, including spreading butter behind her ears, but Ruthie’s head was firmly lodged. Luckily, their house painter arrived that day. A strong man, he was able to pull apart the scrolls and slip Ruthie’s head back through.
    She walked up the stairs, covered in a burgundy Oriental runner, thick bronze bars securing the rug to each stair. Phil loved Oriental rugs and had covered the floors of every room downstairs with them. At the top of the stairwell the house became less fancy, more utilitarian. The floors up here were covered in wall-to-wall beige carpeting. Phil loved to tease the girls about the first night after the carpet was installed, when they both sat up in bed and vomited the strawberry milk shakes they had drunk that evening for dessert. At the time, Phil had been angry with the girls for throwing up. He had felt the girls’ sickness was a sort of sabotage, and while Naomi cleaned up the mess he seethed, muttering that the carpeting he paid good money for, the carpeting he did not even want to install in the first place, had already been marred. In both Julia’s and Ruthie’s rooms there was still a pale brown stain by the side of each bed.
    The linen closet was at the top of the stairs. Ruthie opened it, revealing shelf after shelf of neatly stacked towels and sheets, her baby blankets with their satin edging on the very top, perfectly folded. On the bottom shelf were toiletry supplies: multiple packsof Ivory soap, two huge bottles of Scope, a three-pack of Crest, and two containers of Reach floss.
    Ruthie stared at the shelves, blinking back unexpected tears. Her mother had always been so neat, so organized, so prepared. The smell of clean linens and Ivory soap was redolent of her. She could see her mother, in the den after dinner, sitting on the sofa and folding laundry while she and Phil watched TV.
    Ruthie grabbed a blue beach towel from the middle rack, closed the door, and brought it to the lawyer waiting downstairs.
    Now toweled off and dry, Mr. Parker, slim in his black suit, sat with Aunt Mimi in the study, making polite conversation while they waited for Matt and Peggy to arrive from their hotel so that Mr. Parker could read them the will. Matt and Peggy had been in town since the day before the funeral but were headed back to Virden tomorrow. Though everyone pretty much knew they would be returning to Atlanta in the near future to fetch Julia, for now they needed to get back to their twelve-year-old son, Sam, who