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

the beams now hung here on the wall. Austin said it was the happiest day of Leah’s life when he took the sign down. The Floralee vets traded off being on call. Beneath the sign was a double-bed-size futon sitting atop twenty equally spaced crates. Inside the boxes were photographs, winter ski clothes, and books. Next to the bed sat a Mission-style armchair. Austin insisted this setup was necessary if he had to stay the night with a tough case, but no one bought into that lie or called him on it. The books beneath the futon

    were his dearest possessions. The man was a fool for the classics, a voracious rereader of Steinbeck and Hemingway, an anomaly in the days of television tabloid shows, talk radio, and the three newspapers serving Floralee. The real reason Austin had moved these things in was that Leah had thrown them into the driveway the day she kicked him out. At first she wanted their house to herself. Eventually, when she left Floralee for a larger playground, Austin moved back into his home. Anyone else would have returned the books to their rightful places, but not Austin. If his bookshelves at home were bare, maybe that meant one less thing to dust. If the matched set of Mission chairs suddenly stood solo—well, perhaps he didn’t feel compelled to invite people over. The furniture that stayed here seemed to Rose like a testament, not just to Austin’s fractured marriage but also to his inability to move forward from Leah to trust another woman.

    At the opposite end of the stairway, Rose’s office was neatly organ- ized. Her pine desk featured stacking in and out boxes; her paper- work was date-coded and her blotter free of doodles. A donkey-tail cactus hung above her desk, prickly and green, its healthy append- ages nearly glancing the top of her computer monitor. On the left- hand corner of her desk two matching picture frames held photo- graphs, one of the kids riding double on Max, and the other, a clos- eup of Philip, taken a few months before the accident. Her late hus- band had been hiking at Bandelier with his buddy Mike. Philip’s hands grasped the ladder leading out of the ceremonial kiva at the upper ruins. Emerging from the darkness, he was smiling, looking directly into the camera lens, his eyes open so wide that those dark blue circles surrounding the iris stood out, reminding Rose of the doomed O-rings on the Challenger space shuttle. Every time she looked at the picture she couldn’t help but feel he had been thinking about something important, some thought she’d never get to hear, information that might change how she lived the rest of her life. He and Mike trained all year long for the autumn run. They ran the trails to the kiva, then took the four hundred feet of vertical ladders at a clip that would stop anyone else’s heart. Mike could recite the results of the last decade’s Super Bowls, explain which individual plays had led to magnificent upsets, but otherwise he wasn’t much for recalling details. Usually Rose felt comforted by the photo, but lately the broad smile had the opposite effect.

    Philip’s customers had expected him to be upbeat as he hawked his company’s industrial product line, which included all manner of adhesives, power tools, and saw blades. To Philip, smiling was a work thing, and in his leisure hours he’d had few grins to spare. She ran her finger over the glass and frowned at the dust. Somehow, the last time she’d cleaned, she had missed his picture.
    For a long moment she stood staring into nothing. Had her mar- riage been happy? She’d always assumed so. Then why was it that the longer Philip was gone, the more it felt as if a weight had lifted off her chest? In that airy space that remained, she felt a flutter of panic, as if at any moment she might run out and charge herself a diamond necklace just to obsess about something different. Quickly she ordered her thoughts to redirect themselves. Her computer was calling to her, humming almost