The Milestone Tapes by Ashley Mackler-Paternostro Read Free Book Online Page B

worked the boardwalks of sleepy coastal towns catering to the upper crust of society, selling home goods she stitched and mended herself where she eventually would met Alex Fledger.
    He had been a budding family practitioner, fresh from Ivy league medical school, from a good, solid family with money, eloquence and roots that went both deep and wide. He was straight laced and quiet with good looks, southern manners and a dry, brittle personality. They married shortly after meeting. Alex set her up with a store, and they leisurely had three beautiful sons. She was upper crust now, a boutique owner, a doctor’s wife, and a mother, who traveled in the prim and educated circles of the South.
    “She knows me Gabe. She doesn’t like me. It’s bigger than that, it’s our—” Jenna rolled her eyes and held her arms out in wide, empty observance.
    “Mom,” Gabe cut her off; he knew the story.“That doesn’t change anything. She’s your sister, your only living blood. She’s going to care.”
    “Gabe, it’s not that simple. After my Mom died—” Jenna stopped herself.
    When Jenna left home at eighteen, bound for Seattle, she left behind a happy family. Her mother had waved from the curb at the airport, stuffing a few small bills into her pocket with teary eyes and sad words. Her father had patted her back, told her he was proud of her. Sophia had shuffled her feet and swatted away bugs, whining that it was too hot to stand around all day.
    When Jenna returned, only a few months later, everything had changed. Her mother had cancer, she was bedridden and worn. Her father spent most of his nights at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, yelling, cussing and stumbling around. Sophia was quiet, different, changed. Her eyes were deadened and her smiles forced and sour. Jenna had run. She loved her mother, her father, and her sister, but she saw what was left of their home and she couldn’t be there anymore.
    She had made excuses, school, work or both, to keep herself safely away. And eventually, two years later, it was too late. Her mother was dead, and her father was gone, off to places unknown without a backwards glance. And Sophia was alone, off to live with their cankerous grandmother on a downtrodden farm in the backwoods of Southern Illinois.
    Jenna had been only twenty then, Sophia fifteen. Jenna was a Sophomore with nothing of worth to offer Sophia, but she tried. She wrote, called and tried to scrape enough money together to rent a shabby apartment on the wrong side of town, giving Sophia at least the option to come West if she wanted. But Sophia hadn’t wanted that, or anything else that involved Jenna. While Jenna had been running, Sophia had been building. Walls, so thick and unbreakable, around her heart and her life, that nothing touched her now.
    “After your Mom died, she changed,” Gabe finished.
    “I don’t blame her, it was awful. I left her alone, to deal with all of that, to take everything on ... she was just a kid!”
    Time had explained to Jenna what words, pictures and consequences could not. Jenna had been wrong, she knew that now, a coward to run and hide and pretend that putting miles between them would mean that it didn’t exist.
    “She turned out okay,” Gabe offered, putting a hand on Jenna’s shoulder. Gabe had always tried to understand both sides without placing blame.
    “I don’t know ... I don’t know if how someone turns out is ever a justification for what happened to them.”
    “I’m not trying to rationalize this Jen, you know that. All I’m saying is that she’s okay. And I’m guessing, if the situation were in reverse, you’d want to be there—no matter what.”
    “Of course I’d want to be there!” Jenna’s eyes grew wide.
    “So try. Call her. That’s all you can do, all you can ever do.” Gabe gave Jenna another tight, quick squeeze and wandered back to his desk.
    Jenna could hear Mia singing along with the movie in the family room. “I’ll go start dessert;