the back porch. Plastic tarps covered the kitchen cabinets, double oven, and counters. Prep on the renovations had begun.
“We got you a veggie sandwich.” Gia waved at the third box on the table. “We didn’t know if you were still quasi-vegan or not.”
“That’s great. Thanks.”
“Eat quick.” Madison glanced at her cell phone. “Mike is picking up the tile for us and he’ll be here any minute. We’ve got to get the kitchen demo started today. With Mike’s help, we should have the floor torn up, cleaned out, and ready to start tiling by tomorrow. Fingers crossed.”
Shelley wolfed down her sandwich—it was delicious—and finished just as Mike came up on the porch with a box of tile in his arms. They all jumped up to help unload his truck. Within thirty minutes, they had hammers, chisels, and scrapers whaling away at the old cracked kitchen tiles.
Pyewacket, disturbed by all the racket, took off upstairs to hide. Most likely her favorite hiding spot under Grammy’s bed. Poor kitty was missing her mistress.
Physical labor was a great outlet. At Cobalt Soul, Shelley had learned that exhausting the body calmed the mind. Quickly, she fell into a routine knocking tiles with the hammer and felt herself mentally zoning out to the mindless work. Hummed “If I Had a Hammer.” Which got on Maddie’s nerves. Shelley could tell by her frown, but her sister didn’t say anything, so she kept humming. Temporarily, she put aside thoughts of the baby sonogram in her tote bag. It was too noisy, and they were too busy, to talk about it anyway.
Besides, what would she say? How would she bring it up? Should she even bring it up? So many questions, but no decent answer.
Shelley glanced over at Madison.
Her older sister, dressed in beige capri pants, a black tank top, and leopard-print Roxy sneakers, made home renovations look stylish enough for TV, but of course, that was Madison’s jam. She was in her element.
Sighing, Shelley glanced down at her own ratty T-shirt, holey jeans, and worn-out sneakers. Once upon a time she’d been such a clotheshorse. And then The Incident with Raoul happened and shoved her on a course of reluctant self-discovery.
Shelley finished demolishing the tile she was whacking on and duckwalked in a crouch to the next tile.
The tile in front of the pantry door.
Ugh.
The pantry where it all went down.
Guilt crawled up against Shelley’s heart as her mind flew back to that fateful day five years ago. The day that ruined everything and changed the Moonglow sisters forever.
A sunny May day, much like this one. Maddie had been in their bedroom upstairs with Grammy, Gia, and Maddie’s two best friends helping her get ready for the wedding.
Shelley had never liked Raoul and after what happened at the Mardi Gras party two months earlier—well, that was something she didn’t want to think about either. She hated that he stared at her when no one else was watching. Or how he’d wink at her and make flirtatious comments. Nothing too overt. Nothing blatantly sexual.
But he would smile that smug smile and rake his gaze over her as if he were imagining her naked. And she just knew that he knew that she knew what a douchebag he really was.
Maddie had sent Shelley to the kitchen for ginger ale to settle her nervous stomach. On her way to the pantry, Shelley had peeked out the kitchen window at the beautiful backyard with the Gulf of Mexico glimmering blue beyond.
Grammy had hired Mike to build an altar in the backyard for the wedding. Raoul was standing beside it with his best man. Satin covers and bows decorated the folding chairs. White rose petals lay strewn over the red carpet rolled out toward the altar. So beautiful.
Guests had started arriving. Ushers guided guests to their seats. Raoul’s family, having just flown in from Paris, huddled together looking uncertain. Raoul had moved to the United States with his parents when he was a small child, because his father, a petroleum engineer, had gotten a job in the oil and gas industry in Houston. When his father retired, his parents had returned to France, but Raoul, a grown man by then, had stayed and gotten his US citizenship.
Raoul moved to speak to them. He murmured something, then looked up and caught Shelley watching him. His eyes narrowed, and his smile said, I’d love to get you naked, and soon he came up the porch stairs headed toward her.