The Magnolia Sisters (Magnolia Sisters #1) - Michelle Major Page 0,13
childhood had lacked any of the necessities.
Her mother worked long hours as a neurosurgeon, pushing to raise the glass ceiling at her hospital, and providing Avery with a world-class education, the best nannies money could hire and a million-dollar view of San Francisco Bay. But there had been no running through backyard sprinklers or neighborhood sledding hills. Avery hadn’t been allowed to have friends over who might drip juice on the impeccable white carpet her mother favored. Everything had been perfect and pristine, and all the while Avery had longed for something she’d never known was within reach. All the while Carrie had been given this bucolic childhood. It was so damn unfair.
Avery thought of what Gray had let slip about Carrie giving up her art to take care of Niall. She didn’t want to feel any sympathy for her sister. Carrie had lost a hobby. Avery felt like she’d been robbed of everything.
Now she’d been given a block of failing businesses in this sleepy town, the home she’d always dreamed of still not part of her reality.
It would be comical if it wasn’t so pathetic.
She moved toward the front door, careful of the flagstone walkway that had seen better days. The cracked pieces of stone had grown uneven as tree roots infringed on their path. No one answered when she rang the doorbell, and then she heard a grunt and a crash from the back of the house.
If the front of the house was mildly neglected, the back upped the ante to almost hoarder levels. Heaps of scrap metal and piles of decaying wooden pallets littered the lawn. She could see that the yard might have once been lovely. Tall maple trees canopied the edges and a wrought-iron fence had been erected around one section that looked like an overgrown garden.
How could Niall have let this beautiful property fall to ruin?
A scraping sound interrupted her musings, and she turned to see Carrie about ten feet away, balanced precariously on the highest rung of a ladder—the rung that Avery knew the instructions advised not to use.
Carrie had on denim shorts, a thin T-shirt and beat-up sneakers, her hair pulled into a high bun on her head. She wore thick leatherwork gloves and made low-throated grunts of effort as she scraped a handheld shovel along the house’s gutter, flipping hunks of decaying leaves and debris onto the cobblestone porch below.
“Are you trying to break your neck?” Avery called conversationally when Carrie paused in her heaving.
Her new half sister gave a little shout of shock, and Avery rushed forward when it looked like Carrie might lose her footing.
By the time Avery got to the ladder, Carrie had righted herself and was climbing down. “Are you trying to kill me?” she asked when she got to the ground, rounding on Avery.
“No way.” Avery held up her hands, palms out. “I don’t want to deal with Niall’s mess on my own.”
“Then maybe don’t sneak up on a person.” Carrie wiped a hand across her forehead. She was covered in flecks of dirt and who knew what else.
“What are you doing anyway?”
“Cleaning the gutters. What does it look like?”
Avery gestured to the cluttered backyard. “This place is the second coming of the Sanford and Son junkyard. Why bother with the gutters? It’s like focusing on a splinter in your toe when your leg is broken.”
Carrie frowned. “Who are Sanford and his son? Should I know them?”
“Never mind.” Avery huffed out a laugh. “I watched too many reruns as a kid.”
“Dad wouldn’t let us have a television,” Carrie told her, peeling off the leather gloves. “He wondered why I always wanted to go to my friends’ houses and not have them here.”
“Once again I feel the need to mention...” Avery inclined her head toward the weed-infested lawn. “You’re telling me the lack of TV was your biggest deterrent to having people over?”
Carrie followed her gaze and sighed. “It wasn’t like this back then. The yard was beautiful. My mom loved to garden, and she was OCD in her cleaning. It was another thing that drove her crazy about Dad. He