Kiss Me Hello by L. K. Rigel Read Free Book Online

siding needed paint, and the porch stairs creaked. She dug the house key out of her purse.
    Dad gave her the key when she lived in Sacramento her second year of grad school. She loved her tiny bungalow off G Street, but it was a hovel compared to Aunt Amelia’s Arts & Crafts mansion. He stopped by on a Saturday morning with Cindy in the front passenger seat of the car, Mom’s seat, and Becca in the back. They were leaving for Texas.
    The car idled in the driveway. Cindy didn’t have the nerve to get out. Becca rolled down the back window and rested her chin on her arm, watching. Sara would miss her little sister.
    “It was your mother’s.” Dad handed her a Bible. “She wanted you to have it.”
    Wrong. It wasn’t Mom’s real Bible, the one that first belonged to her great grandmother. That Bible was stored safely in Sara’s bedroom closet, given to her by Mom before she died.
    “Give it to Cindy,” Sara said. “Something to remember her best friend by.”
    “One other thing.” Dad ignored the dig and tucked the Bible under his arm. He fished for something in his pocket. “Whatever Amelia’s done, she’s our flesh and blood.” He handed her a house key. “She’s getting old. If anything should happen, you might need this.”
    “You don’t care about Aunt Amelia.” Sara accepted the key. It belonged to Turtledove Hill, and she wanted it even if it came from him. “And giving me this won’t make me like Cindy.”
    “Sara…life is complicated.”
    “Seems pretty simple to me. You were an asshole to Mom all her life, and now you’re going off to Texas to be all sweetness and light with your new wife.”
    His head jerked back at the word asshole, as if she’d assaulted him. A tiny victory.
    “Always so rigid. So judgmental, and to Aunt Amelia too.” It felt good to stab him with the truth. She twisted the knife. “You married Cindy a month after Mom was in the ground. Was it love at first sight, Dad? Oh, wait. No. You’d known her ten years.”
    The hypocrite.
    The key fit the back door. “Good lord.” Sara dropped her overnight bag on the floor and looked around the huge kitchen. The appliances and work space were on the left and the eating area was on the right. Straight ahead, the archway opened on the hall.
    There was a built-in teakwood breakfast nook in the corner. It popped out like a turret with leaded-glass windows all around. Shelves above held knickknacks and plants. Above the shelves, stained glass windows pictured grape leaves and turtledoves with the tell-tale hash marks on their necks.
    The kitchen proper had a double sink and a horrible avocado-green dishwasher and refrigerator. The teakwood cabinets with brass hardware were beautiful.
    Sara didn’t remember the kitchen wallpaper being so ghastly, flocked red-orange replete with roosters, pigs, and geese. A crime against the architect. An avocado-green landline phone hung on the wall beside the door to a butler’s pantry, the handset cord so long it rolled over on itself on the black and white, fake-tile sheet vinyl floor.
    This was a decorator’s extreme makeover wet dream.
    She dropped her purse and keys on the counter and opened the curtains to let in the late afternoon light. Despite the funky 1970s vibe, she felt like she had come home, flooded with well-being. As if Turtledove Hill had been waiting for her for fourteen years. She’d love to explore, but all she could think of was sleep.
    The hallway led straight through to the front door with the stairway to the second floor on the left at about the midpoint of the house. The first tread creaked and tilted. This was where Aunt Amelia must have fallen. Good thing it wasn’t a higher tread.
    The master bedroom took up the northeast corner of the second floor, a suite with its own bathroom and adjoining sitting room. Another row of stained-glass grape leaves and turtledoves ran above the clear windows that filled the room with light. French doors opened onto a deck that