Senseless Acts of Beauty by Lisa Verge Higgins Read Free Book Online

emotional napalm; the second a calmer and more reasoned approach that left her and her siblings feeling like they were trying to punch shadows.
    Her mother balled the wet dishtowel in her hands, closing her eyes as if summoning the strength of angels. “Why do we always argue like this?”
    “Because you don’t trust me to make good decisions?”
    “You were like this from the moment you were born. A stubborn little redhead always shooting off in the wrong direction. And with five siblings older than you, it was easier at the time for me to give you your head. That was my weakness for loving you so much.”
    Riley braced her hands on the edge of the sink and watched the water swirl down the drain. She knew her mother loved her—had chosen her by adoption—thus making her special, different from her mother’s five naturally born children, filling out the family to the six kids her mother had always wanted.
    But when her mother spoke like this, it gave Riley flashbacks to grammar and middle school. In those days her mother would stand over her as she tried to get Riley to organize her backpack, as her mom quizzed her on what homework was due, as her mother called herself Riley’s secretary in an attempt to make up for whatever common sense and organizational skills Riley just hadn’t been born with.
    More and more Riley felt like a cowbird that had been deposited in the nest of a family of phoebes. Big and ungainly as an egg, needing more care as a hatchling, and, in adulthood, gobbling up the family business that all the other nestlings had expected to share.
    “Honestly,” her mother said on a sigh, “had I known what Bud and Mary had in mind, I’d have talked them out of it. They probably thought they were giving you a great gift, but the truth is that they left you an albatross. But with this latest debacle with the credit union, I’m beginning to understand.” Her mother gazed out the window over the back lawn, wrinkling her tiny nose as if she smelled the mildew of old dreams. “As I’ve stood helpless and watched you ignore good advice, spending what I suspect is your life savings to fix the roof on this building and renovate the bedrooms, all done—yes, I know—as a labor of love, I suddenly realized that for Bud and Mary, you were the perfect choice.”
    Riley followed her mother’s gaze to the back lawn but what she saw in her mind’s eye was her grandparents setting the picnic tables end-to-end, friends coming off the porch to join them, using their wineglasses to anchor the tablecloths as a summer breeze fluttered off the lake. She saw her grandmother in a simple cotton dress bringing bowls of fresh corn and heaping green salads while Grandpa turned barbecue ribs on the grill, laughing while drinking root beer. Then they’d all sit, Grandma with her long, salt-and-pepper hair piled up off her neck and Grandpa with his rubber marsh boots, their guests digging in with abandon, and conversation flowing as the fireflies started to blink and the kids leaped off the bench to chase them around the green, green lawn.
    And then the scene morphed before her eyes to one weekend last summer, when her high school friends had returned home for a mini-reunion. Riley had offered up the camp because she had the room to house them all, if not in the finest of conditions, and she wanted to throw one last party before she sold it to a developer a cousin had recommended. It was a lovely weekend, with Sydney cooking in this kitchen, Lu and Nicole setting the table, Claire slicing tomatoes, and Jenna tossing the salad. Jin kept up an endless monologue while Maya looked on in bemusement. They’d eaten out on the lawn just as her grandparents had, laughing and crying and talking until the wee hours of the morning. That weekend she realized what her grandparents had really wanted.
    No sooner had the last of her friends departed before she’d cratered the development deal, hired renovators, gotten in contact with old