Still Lake - Anne Stuart [2]
This time it wasn’t the cancer. As far as she could tell Grace had made it through this second reoccurrence with flying colors. But in the past few months her mother had gotten more and more forgetful. Grace had never been much of a deep thinker—Marty and Sophie’s mutual father had called her Spacey Gracey with equal parts malice and affection. But her current situation was serious enough that Sophie had gotten worried.
Not that there was anything she could do about it. Doc had been her best friend and confidant since she arrived there, and he’d basically shaken his head. “I don’t know whether she’s having tiny strokes or if it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” he’d said. Grace had flatly refused to go into the hospital for testing, and Doc had told her there’d be time enough if things progressed.
Marty, with typical teenage charm, resented everything about the inn, including the fact she was expected to help out. She resented her older sister even more, but then, that was nothing new. And Grace was getting more and more forgetful, so that she drifted through their lives like a ghostly stranger, old before her time. Which suited Marty just fine. It was bad enough that Sophie had dragged her to the back end of beyond—why did she have to bring the old lady along, as well? Wasn’t this torture enough? she’d demanded.
Sophie eyed the last muffin. If she ate three of them she’d feel sick, not immediately, but soon enough. It didn’t matter, she wanted that muffin, and no one was around to watch her.
She was just about to reach for it when she heard someone outside the kitchen, and she pulled her hand back guiltily.
Grace wandered into the room, her gaunt figure dressed in mismatched clothing, the buttons on the raveling sweater awry. Grace, who’d always been so particular about her designer clothing and her hair. She looked twenty years older than her actual age of sixty. Marty came in behind her, not looking particularly pleased.
“I made muffins,” Sophie said cheerfully, ignoring the fact that only one remained.
“How nice, love,” Grace said in her soft voice. She had made a vain attempt at putting her long, graying hair in a bun, but strands of it stuck out at strange angles, and Sophie knew it would come down in a matter of minutes, leaving Grace looking even more disheveled. “I think I’ll just have some coffee.”
“You need to eat, Mama,” Sophie said. “You know what Doc said.”
Grace stopped to look at her, an odd expression in her hazy blue eyes. “Don’t believe everything everybody tells you, Sophie. People aren’t always what they seem.”
“I’m not…” Sophie began, used to Grace’s increasing paranoia, but her mother had already poured herself a mug of black coffee and wandered off, leaving Sophie alone with her sister.
Marty headed straight for the coffeemaker without a word.
“Good morning to you, too,” Sophie said, then could have slapped herself. Sarcasm didn’t make anything better.
Marty didn’t even bother glancing at her. She poured her coffee and took a deep gulp of it, studiously ignoring her.
“Did you put the new towels in the closet?” Sophie tried to keep her voice light and nonconfrontational. God knows Marty could find something to take offense at in the most innocuous of conversations, but Sophie did her best to avoid conflict whenever she could.
Marty kept her head buried in the crossword puzzle she was perusing. This week her short-cropped, spiky hair was black, tinged with fuchsia at the tips. She’d need to bleach it again when she went to her next phase. Sooner or later she wouldn’t have any hair at all, a prospect that Sophie regarded with mixed feelings. At least she could hope that not too many incipient bad boys would want to impregnate a bald-headed seventeen-year old. “You told me to, didn’t you?” Marty said