“You’re looking…healthy…Kerrison.”
Kerry smiled precisely at him. “Thanks, and no, there’s no base. A friend of mine gave it to me.” She took the napkin at her place setting and opened it, settling it on her lap neatly. “How are things going for you?”
“Pretty good, you know how it is in stocks.” Richard laughed a bit.
“You’re up, you’re down. Right now, we’re trying to hang on while the international stuff dies down.” He peered at her. “We all don’t get to sit out in the sun all day like you guys down in Miami.”
Kerry pushed her hair behind her ear and accepted the jibe. “It definitely has its advantages,” she cheerfully agreed. “This past Sunday I was swimming in the ocean—it was beautiful weather.”
“Thought that job would be keeping you too busy.” Her father snorted.
“It does,” his daughter replied. “I’m at the office before eight AM, and I
Tropical Storm
387
usually don’t leave until after seven. After that, I usually go to the gym or out Rollerblading by my complex.”
“I heard you work on Saturdays.” Roger Stuart gazed across at his daughter.
“Occasionally,” Kerry responded. “Depends on what projects I’m working on.” She glanced up as her mother came in and seated herself. “My system at home will connect up to the office if I need it to.”
Her father grunted. “I hear your boss pays you visits.”
Nothing like getting right to the point, and before the soup’s served, eh?
Kerry sighed inwardly. “Sure. We work very closely together on stuff. And you know, despite all the stories I heard about her, I really like Dar.” Her sister hid a smile.
Senator Stuart glanced up as his soup plate was put down, then he picked up his spoon and pointed it at her. “That’s a dangerous woman. You’d best steer clear of her.” He took a spoonful of soup and tasted it. “More pepper, damn it.”
Angela silently passed him the salt and pepper dishes.
“She can be, that’s true,” Kerry answered his comment. “But I consider myself lucky to have gotten the position under her. And that’s the main reason it just wouldn’t make good sense for me to just up and leave.” She tried to keep her voice calm and reasonable. “The potential to learn, and to advance… I can’t find that here.”
“Why do you need that?” her mother objected. “When you’re married and settled down, what difference is it going to make?”
“C’mon, Mother, it’s a great opportunity,” Angela disagreed. “Once Kerry spends a little time in the position, she can move anywhere and get the same kind of work at the same level. Of course she wants to spend some time doing that. I bet she got a pay raise.” She turned to Kerry and asked, “Didn’t you?”
Kerry gave her sister a smile. “Boy, did I.” She laughed. “I was surprised.
I thought they’d keep me at my previous salary while they tried me out, but no, it was a fifty percent increase.” Even her father looked impressed.
“But you don’t have to worry about that,” her mother persistently objected. “Brian’s going to make you a very good living, dear.”
“He’s just out of school, Mother.” Angela dove back into the fray. “It’s going to take a while. And besides, you can never have enough money, right, Dad?”
Roger Stuart grunted.
An awkward silence fell.
“So, how about those Lions?” Richard asked with forced cheerfulness.
“That was some game the other day, huh?”
Kerry dove into her soup, glad the conversation had been directed away.
So far, so good, but looking at her father’s closed face, she suspected he had another plan already in place.
At least,
she sighed,
Kyle isn’t here.
Facing his smug arrogance over the table would have made the dinner even more aggravating.
The door slowly opened, and the family cook, Elena, poked her head in.
“Everything all right here, ma’am?”
388
Melissa Good
Cynthia Stuart glanced up. “The soup’s a bit on the bland side, Elena, the senator likes more pepper in it.”
Kerry caught the cook’s eye and smiled at her. “I think it’s great. I’ve missed your cooking, Elena.”
The elderly woman smiled back at her. “Glad to hear you say so, Miss Kerrison.” She pulled her head back and the door closed behind her.
Kerry took a roll from the napkin-covered bread basket and split it open, enjoying the rich, warm smell, and ignoring her mother’s scandalized look as she cheerfully covered it with butter. “Did you know my old account is supporting the IRS computers, Dad?”
Senator Stuart glanced at her. “What?”
Kerry took a bite of her roll and chewed it. “Mmm-hmm, that big website they use so people can get forms and information.”
“What, you mean they do their own taxes?” Richard laughed. “I haven’t been able to do that since I left college.”
Figures.
Kerry refrained from rolling her eyes. “I file mine electronically.
Just go to the transmitter’s website, fill in a few fields, and click. It’s gone.”
She took another bite of her roll and a spoonful of the potato soup. “And my refund gets deposited automatically.”
“Ah, the simplicity of an unencumbered life.” Richard smiled at her.
“Wait until you start investing.”
Kerry smiled right back. “I let my 401K do that for me, thanks. We have a company that handles that, and the stock options, and the retirement fund.”
She chewed her roll and swallowed. “I just do my job, they take care of the rest.”
“Wow, that’s a great benefit package,” Angela commented, sipping a spoonful of the soup. “That’s better than the one you had at the other place.”
Kerry nodded. “Much, but then, it’s a much bigger company. It’s a nice building, too. I have pictures if you want to see them later.” She finished off her soup. “Including a shot from my office window. Wait until you see the view.”
“Easy come, easy go,” her father commented. “From what I hear of your boss, she could just cut you loose anytime.” He picked up a roll and took a bite out of it. “I don’t like her way of doing business, and I’m going to get them out of our state contracts if it’s the last thing I do.”
Kerry bit her tongue to keep from leaping to Dar’s defense. “Does the account not do what it’s supposed to do?”
Senator Stuart looked at his daughter. “How in the hell should I know?
All that mixed-up mumbo jumbo you people spout like garbage. All I know is we asked for some simple things, and got told it wasn’t going to happen, and nobody tells me that.” He slapped a hand on the table. “Especially not some goddamned smart-mouthed woman.”
Another awkward silence fell, as Kerry refused to rise to his baiting.
Finally her mother cleared her throat. “Tell us about the church bazaar you ran the other week, Angela.”
After they finished dinner, Richard gamely took on the senator in a debate about offshore fishing rights, which the older man was reviewing as part of his work. Mary and Elizabeth, the two house maids, silently cleared off
Tropical Storm
389
the table. Kerry sat back and folded her arms across her stomach, wishing for an excuse to leave. Considering, she turned as Angela put her napkin down.
“Wow, that was great, wasn’t it. You up for a walk?”
Angela pursed her lips in amusement, then nodded. “Yeah, we can head up towards the lake, I think they’re starting to string up the Christmas lights.”
She stood up. “We’re going to go for a walk to the lake, Richard, are you all right here with Daddy?”
Her husband looked up blankly. “Huh? Oh, oh sure, honey. You go on.
Have fun.” He patted her knee condescendingly. “I know all this business talk must be boring you.”
Kerry got up and retrieved her jacket from the closet, patting its pocket to make sure her cell phone was inside. Then she lifted her sister’s jacket from its hook and handed it to her as Angela met her at the door. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“No problem, that crap does bore me,” her sister replied softly. “Oh, not that I don’t think offshore rights aren’t important, I do, but I’ve heard this same argument six times already. Richard’s got some money in fishing futures, and he thinks he can influence Daddy into voting the measure in.”
They walked through the hall and out the front door, closing it carefully behind them and exiting into a cold, clear night. Kerry tugged her jacket shut, watching her breath appear before her eyes, and chuckled softly. “Not used to this anymore.”
Angela glanced at her. “Already?” she teased gently. “That old blood thins fast, huh?” She reached up and pushed her curly brown hair out of her face.
“You got that right,” her sister admitted. “I like being able to go out to pick up the paper on Christmas morning in a T-shirt, thanks.” She kicked a rock out ahead of her as they moved away from the house and onto the path that would take them up towards the lake. “Dar was telling me the funniest stories of the first time she had to drive in snow and ice. She ended up almost getting stuck in a washout gully.”
Angela laughed. “I can imagine. Heck, I almost did that when I first started driving. And if I recall, you did some pretty horrible things yourself.”
She prodded Kerry’s shoulder. “Remember the time you hit that cow?”
Kerry covered her eyes. “Oh, god, don’t remind me of that. Those pathetic brown eyes. It took half the debating team to get the car out of that field and lift her up.” She sighed and rocked her head from side to side to loosen the muscles of her neck. “I needed a walk, I’m stuffed.”
Her sister chuckled. “Did you do that just to piss Mom off?” she queried.
“I thought she was going to have a coronary—watching you chow down like that.”
That surprised a laugh out of Kerry. “No, I didn’t really. I was just hungry. We didn’t get anything on the plane except for peanuts, and I was too nervous to eat this morning.” Actually, she reflected, she’d traded breakfast time with snuggling time and hadn’t regretted it. “I should have thought about that, about Mom, I mean, but…” She sighed. “I’ve guess I’ve gotten out of the habit of denying myself in the past month.” It was always tiny portions at her mother’s table, she remembered belatedly. No seconds, and tiny bites.
390
Melissa Good
Oh well.
“One more nail in my coffin, right?”
Angela laughed. “I thought it was great, I haven’t seen you eat like that since we were kids. And to be honest, sis, I thought the last time I saw you, on the Fourth, that you were really too thin.”
“Mmm, that’s what Dar said,” Kerry acknowledged soberly. “And, that’s what all my friends were telling me. I think I knew that, deep down, but…I kept hearing that harping. I didn’t think it was worth fighting about,” she admitted with a sigh.
“I told Mom that. She’s got that weird Spartan mentality, though,”
Angela commented wryly. “So, how did Dar manage to convince you?”
Kerry smiled. “Convince me? She subverted me.” She laughed. “After I started working up in her building, I would find these cookies and god only knows what else on my desk all the time. I finally cornered her on it, saying, like, what is up with this, Dar?” She reached down and picked up a rock, then tossed it to one side. “Then she told me she was worried I’d blow out the window if they opened the storm doors upstairs. I mean, she was really kind of cute about it, all embarrassed and everything. So…” Kerry shrugged. “I kind of chilled out about it,” she reflected. “It was…harder than I thought at first, I kept wanting to do stupid things…like come back after we’d had dinner and make myself throw up…but my brain took over, and I didn’t. And then we went to Disney World, where I couldn’t have gotten away with that if I tried, since Dar was with me every single minute practically, and after that…”
She chuckled softly. “And besides, I had so much more energy. I mean, before, I would go to work, come home, maybe one night or two I’d go out skating with Colleen, but mostly I’d just crash, because I was so tired. Now it’s different, I either go to the gym, or go ’Blading, or I’m out with Dar…or…I’m hardly ever tired.”
“In case I hadn’t said this before, by the way…” Angela glanced at her.
“…you really do look fantastic, Sis.” She watched Kerry hop from rock to rock down the path. “It’s like you’re a different person. Or maybe one I remember from a long time ago.”
Kerry stopped and faced her. “I’m pretty sure that’s not all chocolate chip cookies,” she commented wryly as she hopped off the last rock and trotted over to Angela. “For the last few weeks, I’ve felt better than I have in my entire life.” She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of the cold air, then let it out in a satisfied puff, watching the cloud gather around her head.
Angela shook her head a little. “I always knew when you finally fell in love, it’d be a doozy.” She gazed at her sister. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Kerry spread her arms wide and threw her head back, drinking in the stars hungrily. “Yes.” She breathed. “And it’s wonderful.” She let her arms drop and cocked her head at her sister. “It was like I was waiting for this to happen all my life. And it was so strange, because the minute I saw her, I could feel it.” She had to laugh. “And it was the most horrible of circumstances, too. But…oh my god, Angela, I had no idea it was possible to feel this strongly about anything or anyone, but I do.”
Her sister put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m really glad to hear that, it makes what I have to tell you a lot easier.”
Kerry slid an arm around her waist and cocked her head. “What’s that?”
Tropical Storm
391
A wry, half-embarrassed smile crossed her younger sister’s face. “The baby’s father…” She rested a hand on her still-flat stomach. “It’s Brian.”
Kerry’s jaw dropped, and she stared at her in amazement. “Holy cow!” It was a moment of shock, a moment of almost betrayal, and then she laughed.
“No wonder he hasn’t called me since August.”
Angela peeked at her. “You’re not mad?”
Her sister sighed. “How could I be? You know how I feel about Brian.
He’s sweet, he’s one of my best friends, I love him like a brother.” A pause.
“Period.”
“He was so scared you weren’t ever going to talk to him again,” her sister told her. “That’s why he’s not over here tonight. We made it up so that I would kinda, um…”