Grace Anne - By Kathi S. Barton Page 0,76
in the world he had to see it. The agent looked over at him like he wanted to say something. But Michael agreed with Grace. They had more important things to do than to answer questions.
“I agree with her. Ask or don’t, but make it quick or you might get a few things known to you that you might not have bargained for.” The man blustered for several seconds. “You’re eating at your time, sir. Get to it.”
~~~
The next morning, they had her sitting in a chair and Grace started feeling sorry for herself. She was black and blue over most of her body. Her forehead had fifteen stitches and both her eyes were blackened. She could get around slowly with the help of a walker, but it hurt like hell and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed her hair, much less her entire body. When the door to her room opened she nearly snarled at the person to go the fuck away.
“You know you look like you want to shoot someone,” Sin said in way of greeting. “I’m armed if you want to make someone here a good target. There’s that little shit in the lobby that I wouldn’t mind making skip a few times.”
Making a person skip had been something that the two of them said about shooting someone. She had said she didn’t want to kill everyone that pissed her off, but she would like to make them dance a bit by shooting at their feet. Sin had told her that would be more like skipping than dancing and it had stuck.
Grace burst into tears as her other sisters came into the room. They each took a seat and sat on the bed as well. Grace took the tissue that Alyssa handed her and none of them said a word until she’d blown her nose twice more.
“You must think I’m a ninny. I’ve been through all this crap over the past few days and here I am upset because I have a few bruises on my face.” She looked at all of them before she said what she really thought. “I should have told you all. It’s…this is totally my fault that all of this happened to you—”
“That’s enough. You had nothing to do with the insanity of one person. My God, you were hurt just as much as any one of us,” Jazzie snapped. “Had you told us then, I’m sure that the same things would have happened. We were all duped by her.”
Grace didn’t believe that for a minute, but she didn’t say anything. It was hard enough trying to get a grip on what had transpired in that house without adding the burden of trying to explain why she felt the way she did.
“Spill it,” Sin told her quietly. “If you don’t then your head will explode and poor Michael will be all alone. By the way, I kinda like him. He’s an ass most of the time, but I can take him down a peg or two on the range quick enough when he gets out of hand.”
Grace knew that she had to tell them. She looked to the door when the others walked in. She smiled at Cain and the other men in her family now. Most of them she didn’t know very well, but she did know that they loved their spouses with all of their hearts.
“Mother wasn’t always evil like she was toward us. There was a side of her, Guinnie; that was the kindness in her that the others couldn’t…no, that’s not right, the others wouldn’t show. Even Mother couldn’t be what Guinnie was.”
“The child, Guinnie was the child, right?”
Grace nodded at Quinn’s question.
“I met her then. I was really sick. I think I was about ten and Mother came into my room. I had the feeling that Mother was there and when she began to speak I realized she wasn’t acting the same. Like her voice was even different.”
“They all had very distinct mannerisms and voices. Even their dress was different.” Grace smiled at the women who were dressed so differently that it was amazing. Alyssa was dressed in torn jeans and a sloppy t-shirt, tennis shoes with no socks. Quinn had on dress pants, a tailored blouse, and heels. Then there was Jazzie who, even in her glowing maternal state, looked as if a cockatoo had been the color idea for her clothes. Sin was dressed as one would think of a woman who’d spent