The Wilder Sisters by Jo-Ann Mapson Read Free Book Online

She replaced the lid and threw it in the trash. Then, as she turned to shut the fridge door, an urge overcame her, and her hands began grabbing anything and everything that could possibly rot. Out went the fat-free peach yogurt, half a head of lettuce, some questionable cottage cheese, three pears not quite ripe enough to eat. When she was down to individual jars, Lily opened the sun- dried tomato pesto and sank down to the kitchen floor. She ate it off her fingers until she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the oven door: pathetic, single, and looking like she was going to stay that way. Buddy Guy sat hopefully at her feet. Her chubby blue dog never begged, but he was always grateful for whatever came his way.
    “What do you think, amigo ? Should we have an adventure?” Buddy Guy woofed, and she offered him the last fingerful of pesto.
    Never a picky eater, and always eager to use his tongue, he lapped her hand clean.
    “Okay, then. Go find your toys.”
    Lily packed her good jeans and her little Calvin Klein tops. She tore her closet apart until she located her old English riding boots, which needed a good polishing. She left behind every vile vial of makeup, left hanging in the dry-cleaning wrap the costly suits that graduated from taupe to charcoal to funereal black. She dug through the drawers in her office until she found her maps, then drew up a plan that would include two days’ driving. She finished packing the Lexus just as the sun was coming up.
    Gazing to the east, she could hardly wait to put miles between herself and this moment. Look out, Floralee , she whispered. Your prodigal daughter is on her way back .

    3
    She Wanted Money

A

    fter dashing home for lunch, running errands that included buying cups for the complimentary coffee in the front office
    and toilet paper for the restroom, Rose drove the red Bronco up the oval driveway toward the territorial-style adobe that housed the veterinary office. She navigated the wide curve around the small patch of green lawn, shady under the single gambel oak someone had planted decades before. Beneath the tree various brave and heroic police dogs were buried. Small brass plates marked their graves: Kit Carson, Tecumseh, and Hobson’s Choice. On patriotic holidays people left little American flags, poking them into the earth. Sometimes passing schoolkids stole them, but otherwise no one ever bothered to take them down. The sight of the fading Stars and Stripes flapping in the breeze always touched Rose’s heart, made her feel American in a way that voting failed to.
    Employee parking—a wide swath of gravel—was located behind the building. Rose dutifully parked there, but rain or shine she walked around to the front of the building to enter, because the back door led through the freezer room. Inside, stacked like so much kindling, dead pets awaited pickup for mass cremation. In a separate refrigeration unit, various animal corpses were scheduled for nec- ropsy. Since the days when she could toddle upright, Rose had brought home abandoned magpie nestlings and nursed them with eyedroppers. Orphaned kittens grew fat and happy under her care. The cool scales of garter snakes didn’t repel her the way they did other girls. Horses trusted her the same way they did Pop, sensing that Rose’s consistently quiet nature was something they could rely on.

    Animal lives were so brief. She understood that not every client passing through Austin’s veterinary clinic would receive a clean bill of health or necessarily make the exit. Responsible doctors sometimes had to cut into corpses to find answers, but the blood-and-guts stuff gave her the shudders. It haunted her the same way Philip’s accident did. In the freezer room once, she’d encountered—spread out on a tarp—what looked like miles of intestines from some poor horse who’d died of sand colic. On the back counter Austin had a collection of enteroliths he’d removed from various equines whose