Let Sleeping Dogs Lie by Suzann Ledbetter Read Free Book Online Page B

solution deserved a Nobel peace prize.
     
     
In the hall bathroom, Dina ran water in the sink and pretended the mirror above it didn't exist. Off with the black cargo pants, her sour-sweaty top and bra; on went the giant Mizzou T-shirt she'd slept in the night before. Soaping and rinsing her face felt wonderful. A hot shower would be ecstasy, but water tattooing the plastic tub surround sounded like marbles in a cocktail shaker.
     
     
Her face buried in a hand towel, she yelped when a voice said, "Where the devil have you been, young lady?"
     
     
Dina's head whiplashed toward the door, her pulse spiking a zillion beats a minute. Clutching the towel to her chest, she shrieked, "Jesus Chr-ist, Mom. You scared the livin' hell out of me."
     
     
By Harriet's expression, she was gratified to know she hadn't lost the ability to strike terror in the heart of her kid from ambush. "That pizza joint closes at eleven on weeknights." She sniffed several times, then puckered her lips. "This is Thursday, you look like you've been dragged through a knothole backward and what I smell ain't pepperoni."
     
     
"Oh, yeah?" Dina flinched. Sure, her defense strategies were years out of practice, but they hadn't been that lame since fourth grade. What popped out was a snotty, even lamer, "Technically, it's been Friday for almost two hours."
     
     
"You said you'd be home before midnight."
     
     
"I said I'd probably be home by midnight." Dina hung the damp towel on the bar behind her, smoothing the wrinkles and leveling the hems. "If you needed me, all you had to do was hit the panic button."
     
     
An emergency alert device hanging like a pendant around Harriet's neck was programmed to automatically dial Dina's cell phone. An autodial to 911 would be faster, but a city ordinance prohibited a direct connection to an emergency dispatcher. It was up to Dina to contact emergency services.
     
     
"Too many false alarms for a direct call," a city official told Dina. "An average of sixteen a day when the city council passed the ordinance. And that was twenty years ago."
     
     
A subscription service would relay confirmed panic-button emergencies, but it cost forty dollars a month. Dina couldn't afford it and a cell phone, too.
     
     
"I'm sorry, if I—" The doorway was empty. Peering out, Dina glimpsed the tail of a seersucker housecoat rounding the corner into the dining room. When Dina caught up with her mother, she was fumbling with the tote bag's zipper.
     
     
"What do you think you're doing?" coincided with the TV announcer's "Only thirty seconds left. Act now, before it's too late…."
     
     
"Since you won't tell me what you're up to," Harriet said, "I have to find out my own self."
     
     
Paper crackled as she jerked out three white pharmacy sacks, their tops stapled shut. Her righteous scowl deflating, she delved for paydirt at the bottom of the bag.
     
     
"What's this?" she inquired, an "Aha!" implicit in her tone. The alleged contraband emerged, cocooned in a plain plastic bag.
     
     
"Okay, you got me," Dina said. "You'd think I'd learn it's impossible to put anything over on you for long." She pulled out a chair and sat down hard. "Go ahead. Open it."
     
     
Hesitating, her eyes downcast and despair evident, Harriet unwrapped whatever Pandora's box she'd imagined and now wished she'd left alone.
     
     
While she stared transfixed at the carton, Dina said, "The pharmacist on the graveyard shift had customers stacked up three deep when I walked in. That's why I was so late. I wanted to ask some questions, or better, get his recommendation, instead of buying just any ol' electronic glucose monitor off the shelf."
     
     
Feeling guilty, among other things, for leading on her mother, letting her deliver her own comeuppance, Dina added, "The pharmacist showed me, it really is almost painless. No more finger-sticks to dread three or four times a day."
     
     
Harriet ran a knuckle under one eye, then the other. "I shouldn't