don’t die. She got out her phone to call Rita. She’d convinced the nurse they should exchange numbers since Tara lived an hour from the hospital, and Joseph, the official family contact, wasn’t big on sharing news.
Tara boosted herself up onto the high bed, sinking into the thick pillow-top, and waited for Rita to answer.
“This is Rita.”
“How is Faye doing?” Tara asked.
“Holding her own.” Was there a hesitation in Rita’s voice?
“Should I come back out? Is she having problems? I’ve got a laptop. I can easily work there.” Tara got to her feet.
“Stay where you are. Get some rest. Your sister’s busy healing. She knows you’re pulling for her.”
Tara swallowed past the tightness in her throat caused by Rita’s words. “I’ll be there in the morning then, but if anything happens. Anything—”
“I’ll call. I promise. Now don’t make me sorry I gave you my number.”
“I won’t. Thanks again.”
Just as Tara clicked off, a text appeared on her display. It was from Jeff Cameron, the CEO of Cameron Plastics.
Natives restless re: webinar. Make this work.
He’d flown in his division managers to plan the company-wide conference Tara was to facilitate later in the year to improve manager–employee relations. Jeff was also president of the manufacturing trade association, so his praise could bring new clients. She was doing decently for a new company, but she had to keep building. Grow or die.
She reassured him as best she could, though live meetings were always more powerful. Eye contact drew people in, raised the energy level and built enthusiasm. In a webinar, people were easily distracted and she’d be unable to read body language.
A lively PowerPoint helped, so Tara would create that now. She managed to shut out her emotions and worries to make decent progress, though she dozed at the keyboard, waking up when Judith yelled that dinner was ready.
Her mother was eating in her room, Judith told her, so it was just Tara at the kitchen table. Besides soup, Judith had made fried chicken with gravy, corn on the cob, creamed spinach and homemade rolls. Sunday dinner. Judith had fussed, which touched Tara. She ate all she could knowing Judith would interpret any leftovers as not liking her cooking.
“I’m stuffed,” she said finally, so full she feared she’d pop the zipper on her jeans.
“Good. You’re skinnier than your mother.”
Over Judith’s head was a shelf loaded with cookbooks. Looked like Tara’s mother had kept up the tradition of giving Judith a new one each Christmas—her mother’s hint that Judith try something new.
“You ever use any of those cookbooks?”
Judith shrugged. “Your mother likes me to have things to dust.”
She smiled. Tara liked Judith, despite her frostiness. The woman clearly loved Tara’s parents, and was especially close to her mother.
Tara decided to hold the webinar in the sunroom her mother used as her office, so she lifted the roll top of the antique secretary and set up her laptop, plugging into the ethernet she found there.
This was her favorite room, cozy with soft furniture, an embroidered window seat and a half-dozen hanging plants. The heavy food made her sleepy again, plus her brain felt like it had been sandpapered, so she made herself a cup of espresso with her mother’s expensive machine—and put the finishing touches on her presentation before the meeting was to start.
By the time she closed out the webinar at 10:00 p.m., Tara was wringing with sweat and totally wired on adrenaline and caffeine. Judging from the relaxed comments, the thoughtful questions and the absence of rustling, the meeting had gone well. Jeff had sounded pleased as he signed off.
She stood and stretched, thinking she’d make some tea or go for a walk to get rid of her nervous energy. The top of the secretary held photos—mostly formal black-and-white pictures in elaborate silver frames. There was one color shot in a contemporary frame. Tara picked it up. It was of Faye, Tara and their mother from the day trip to Sunset Crater they’d taken the day before Faye’s wedding. Tara smiled. They all looked happy, and the light was beautiful. This would be the photo she taped to Faye’s bed tray.
Tara headed to the kitchen to make tea and find a knife to lift up the frame tabs.
In the dim kitchen, she was startled to see her mother on a stool at the counter. Light from the full moon glimmered off ice in a highball glass beside a bottle of vodka.
“Is that a gimlet?” Tara asked. That was her mother’s drink.