Krista shrugged. “How will we know for sure?”

“We watch and learn. He was very nice. He actually got a little teary. I wonder what it’s like to find out you have an adult daughter and grandchildren.” Charley smiled. “I’m an accomplished investigative reporter. Want me to research him?”

“No,” Krista said, standing up in the tub and reaching for a towel. “If he can take me at face value, I can do the same.”

“But you don’t have to,” Charley said. “You have very good reasons to be cautious.”

Krista toweled off. “I missed a lot of social skills in prison but I learned a few things the rest of you didn’t. I can hot-wire a car, slip a wallet out of a breast pocket and I can read the hell out of people.” Then she grinned.

Chapter Sixteen

August was upon them and Charley was growing restless.

“You probably need to get back to work,” Meg said. “I can’t imagine you lying around some lake house all summer long. Go back home. Krista and I will be fine. I’m doing well, John comes on the weekends and Jo is a frequent visitor. You’re bored.”

“I’m not bored. This is lovely.”

Meg laughed at her. “You’re so bored you’re boring me. Go home. Find a great job!”

Work would help if she could bear to be away from Meg, but there was no work for her to go back to. She really thought Michael would have come by now. She knew it would be easy enough for him to get away during the summer session. He was preparing for Cambridge. And he was holding a hard line. They’d talked but they hadn’t made much progress. And she’d only been home to see him once since April. They’d never spent so long apart. No job, no Michael? There were times she felt that at forty-four her life was over.

“It’s Michael, isn’t it?” Meg said. “You’ve been dancing around the subject all summer.”

“We talk all the time,” Charley said. And they quarreled a lot. Enough so that Charley always went down to the dock to talk to him.

“Right,” Meg said. “Unless I missed something, you’re no closer to resolving your standoff. Charley, what are you afraid of?”

“Look who’s talking,” Charley said. “After all your health problems and all the uncertainty, you moved away from your husband to spend a summer at the lake with your crazy family.”

“That was a good idea. For John as well as me,” Meg said. “I’m not the only one who needs a break from cancer. If I were in the city right now, John wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his work. Not only does he need the distraction of work, his patients need him.”

“And he needs you,” Charley said.

“If I needed him close at hand he could take a leave but I’m so glad he hasn’t. When he’s hovering over me I feel so bad. I feel like because of me John has to be worried and sad.”

“John’s a strong man, don’t worry about him. Worry about yourself.”

“Charley, I am,” she said. “This is what I wanted to do and it was the right thing. I’m at peace with everything. And this is good. It’s everything I hoped it would be. Hell, it’s more than I hoped. You bumped into Jake and now Andrea can get to know him. She can connect with her DNA, learn her biological family history. That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come here. Have you told Michael?”

“I told him,” she said. “He said, ‘That’s great.’ But it wasn’t convincing.”

“I’m sorry. I think you should go home. Work things out with him.”

“Easier said than done,” she said.

Meg was quiet for a little while and Charley didn’t speak. Finally, Meg said, “Listen, Charley, I hope it’s not over between you and Michael. I love him and you two have been so good together. But whatever it is, end it on a high note. There’s a lot to be said for letting go because it’s complete and there’s nothing more to do. Don’t drag it out. Get it resolved. Put your affairs in order. Suffering sucks.”

Charley wanted to ask Meg if she was suffering, if there was something they should talk about. Was Meg giving up?

But instead she said, “I’m fine. It’s just easy to be lazy here, isn’t it? But you’re right—I’m going to write him a long letter. It’s really not like us to be at odds. We’ve negotiated bigger things than this.”

She looked at her sister and smiled. Then she thought, Please don’t leave me, Meg! Please!

* * *

Jo asked Krista when her next day off was. “Great. I want you to get up nice and early and pack us a picnic lunch.”

“Where will we have this picnic?” she asked.

“If no one objects, I thought we’d take the boat across the lake and find a quiet spot. Maybe an empty lot. We’ll find something.”

“Should I invite Meg and Charley?” she asked.

“Can it just be you and me? Just for a few hours.”

“I’m sure that’s okay. But are you staying over?”

“One night.”

Krista wasn’t overly curious about this invitation. When her mother visited they often found some excuse to get off by themselves to talk. There wasn’t much either of them wished to hide from the other two women but there was so much catching up to do. Over the years their phone calls had been so short and their letters so guarded. Krista had tried opening up about her life at Chowchilla but she didn’t want to say too much. So much of that life had been dirty and painful and she didn’t want to see that pain reflected in Jo’s eyes.

Pity. The main reason Krista didn’t talk about prison life was because enduring anyone’s pity was too difficult. Krista had so many adjustments yet to make. She would never be an ordinary, normal woman. She would always and forever be a woman who had spent hard time in a penitentiary.

When Jo arrived Charley and Meg wanted to know how Hope was getting along. “She’s doing pretty well, I suppose,” Jo said. “She’s settled in a very nice rehab facility, but it’s a hospital, not the Ritz. She’s very clear on what’s happening, but it’s so amazing—she still slides into that old delusional way of thinking without so much as a comma in her sentence. She’ll pop out something like, ‘I wonder if Franklin will take time for a couple of weeks at the Cape with us.’ And I just shake my head. She’s depressed, of course. Her life as she sees it or wants it has been taken away. But the doctor said it would probably be like this for a while.”

“Do you visit her a lot?” Charley asked.

“When I can,” Jo said. “I admit, the whole scene depresses me, too! But if Hope will make an effort I’ll support the effort.”

“She’s lucky to have you,” Charley said. “You have such a forgiving nature. I don’t know if I could be as forgiving.”

“If it was your child, you could.”

Their boat was a small fishing craft with a motor and oars in the event the motor ran out of gas or had some other problem. They settled in and Krista worked the motor. “Tell me when you see a spot you like,” she told her mother.

After about fifteen minutes of puttering along Jo yelled her name and pointed. There was a spot with a short beach they could land the boat on. There didn’t appear to be a house on the lot and above the beach was a grassy, shaded area. They pulled the lightweight aluminum boat up onto the beach. Jo spread a towel to put their picnic on, then settled herself on the grass beside it. “Let’s see what you have here,” she said.

“Tuna fish,” Krista said. “With lettuce and pickles and chips and apples. I will never eat bologna again.”

“Got enough of that, did you?”

“Almost every day,” she said. “And I didn’t like it that much before.”

Jo popped the top on a canned lemonade. “We’ve had so much time together, you’d think we’d be all caught up. But things keep changing.”

“With any luck things will stop changing all the time,” Krista said.

“As a matter of fact, I’m making some changes, Krista. I think it will surprise you. I’m going to a part-time schedule at the flower shop for the next three weeks and then I’m retiring.”

Krista gasped. “Can you afford that?”

“It turns out I can. I’ve been in secret talks with your aunt Lou. All these years I thought she was living in luxury—her own type of luxury—but in fact she’s been putting money aside and saving for retirement.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember I told you back in the old days, when you were small, every time Roy and I needed to borrow, Lou would ask me to sign away a piece of my potential inheritance. Well, she said once Roy was gone and I was alone, she changed her mind. When the Grand Avenue house was sold so Grandma could go into assisted living and then the nursing home, Lou put the money in mutual funds and bonds, keeping it safe. Many of the more valuable keepsakes—art, crystal, silver, jewelry—she kept in her house.” Jo laughed and shook her head. “You should see the place. Looks like a hoarder’s dream. It’s like a warehouse. When I asked her why, she said she didn’t think I’d have anyone to take care of me in my old age and, typical of Lou, she didn’t give me enough credit for trying to take care of myself. She was wrong. I was smart enough. I didn’t have much of a job but I had it for a long time. I had a little IRA and I saved here and there. Plus, I lived lean. There wasn’t anything I really needed that I denied myself, but I wasted nothing. It was a habit I formed when you girls were small and we seemed to always be on the brink of collapse.” She took a bite of her sandwich.

“But you always sent me money!” Krista said.

“You needed a little to get you by,” she said.

“Is that why you got rid of the car?” Krista asked.

“When the price of gas went a little crazy, I left it parked and made good use of the bus. Before long I decided it was crazy to keep a car I didn’t drive when the bus worked just fine. Lots of people in my neighborhood used the bus. Lots of people in the neighborhood are now old like me,” she added, laughing. “So, I’m retiring because there are things I want to do. I want to spend more time with you, I want to be sure Hope is getting what she needs and I’d like to see more of Beverly.”