The Other Side - J. D. Robb [137]
The next morning, Saturday, a reluctant M.J. once again made the trip from Alexandria to Johnnie’s Bend.
Mr. Brown had whittled a fine point to the fact that the harder they fought against the house, the more likely they would be to draw attention to its peculiarity, which would then draw peculiar people who would in turn, no doubt, provide her with any number of peculiar situations far worse than having a house that refused to fall down. He hadn’t had to stab her with it; she got the point—the last thing she needed was more peculiar.
Furthermore, given a little time and distance to cool off and gather her thoughts, she found she had a few questions, such as:
“If you can lock us out of the house, why didn’t you lock us in last night?” she asked her mother and aunts as they congregated in the kitchen to watch Odelia make pies. “You said you needed my help, and I wasn’t planning to ever come back here. Why’d you let me leave?”
In the sunny kitchen they were considerably more . . . nimbus than they had been the night before in the gloomy shadows of the evening. In the light of day the house took on a fascinating second life—the only way she could describe it—one hovering over the other so that while the three of them sat at the kitchen table together, M.J. sat at one as solid and real as she was while her mother and Aunt Imogene lounged in chairs across from her that were as hazy and transparent as they were.
The same was true of Odelia, who worked happily rolling out crusts on a butcher board that was now a ceramic countertop and baking in an oven that was in the same place in the kitchen but larger and from a different era.
“Goodness.” Imogene laughed. “We let you leave because if you have even a single drop of our blood in your veins, then you would have been mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets if we’d locked you in. Better to let you go and let your natural curiosity bring you back.” She held her hands out as if it were as clear as she was.
“I told them you could be quite stubborn, Mari—”
“Don’t say it.”
“It’s your name.”
“I prefer M.J.”
Her mother played with one of the diamond rings on her fingers. There were four of them, one from each of her marriages. She sighed. “Well, anyway, I’m gratified to see you’re learning to flex a little, darling.”
“Flex? Are you kidding? Living with you, I flexed like a freaking Slinky, Mother. It always had to be your way. Did you know about these two before you died? Is that why you refused to sell and move to a retirement community?”
“I refused to sell because this was always my home—except when I didn’t live here, of course. After Papa passed, Odelia lived here because she had nowhere else to go. And you and I came to visit from time to time—”
“Between marriages.”
“Well, where does one go when one’s heart has been shattered, first by death and then by unfaithfulness and greed and neglect? One goes home, of course, to where she has always been loved and sheltered and protected from the harsh realities of the world.”
With a fond, sisterly smirk, Imogene chuckled. “I don’t suppose it’ll surprise you to hear that your mother wanted to be Sandra Dee when she was a teen.”
Her mother gasped. “Early teen.”
Odelia giggled. “She really wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor, but Papa nearly had a stroke when she told him.”
“Why? Hasn’t she always been considered one of the all-time greats . . . as an actress, I mean? Her personal life aside?”
“Oh, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was Meryl Streep or Sally Field. Acting was not what he considered an acceptable profession for a woman.” Odelia made the comment casually, her hands on her hips, looking around the kitchen in confusion. She snatched up