Windfall Page 0,16

crush on Jimmy Paglisi. Sarah, stealing my first steady boyfriend out from under my nose. We weren't close. We'd never been close. For one thing, we weren't anything like the same. Sarah had been a professional woman... emphasis on the woman, not the professional. She'd set out to snare herself a millionaire, which she'd done, and to live the life she'd always wanted, and damn whoever had to suffer to get her there. She'd signed the prenup because, at the time, she'd thought she had Chretien completely beguiled and could get him to tear it up with enough honeyed compliments and blow jobs.

I could have told her-hell, I had told her-that Chretien was way too French for that to work.

Sarah was stranded on my couch: sniffling, humiliated, practically penniless. No marketable skills to speak of. No friends, because the kinds of country club friends Sarah had made all her life didn't stick around after the platinum American Express got revoked.

She had nobody else. Nowhere to go.

There was nothing else I could say but, "Don't worry. You can stay with me."

Later, I would remember that and pound my head against the wall. It was the flickering warning light on a road where the bridge was out and, like an idiot, I just kept on driving.

Right into the storm.

I set about getting Sarah settled in my tiny spare room. She'd been weeping with gratitude right up until I heaved her suitcase onto the twin bed, but she stopped when she took a look around.

"Yes?" I asked sweetly, because I could see the words Where's the rest of it? on the tip of her tongue.

She swallowed them-it must have choked her-and forced a trembling smile. "It's great. Thanks."

"You're welcome." I looked around, seeing it through her eyes. Her utility closet in California hadn't been this small, I was certain. The furniture wasn't exactly au courant-a rickety '50s nightstand in grubby off-white French Provincial with a cockeyed drawer, a campus castoff bed too hard and lumpy for even college students. A scarred, ugly dresser of no particular pedigree, with missing drawer pulls and a cracked mirror, salvaged out of a Dumpster with the help of two semipro football players.

A real do-it-yourself nightmare.

I sighed. "Sorry about this. I had to move when-"

"-when we thought you were dead," she said. "By the time they'd tracked me down to give me the news, your friends already knew you were all right and let me know, thank God, or I'd have just gone crazy."

Which gave me a little bit of a warm, sisterly glow, until she continued.

"After all, I'd just found out about Chretien and Heather. I swear, if I'd had one more thing to think about, I don't think even the therapy would have helped."

I stopped feeling bad about the furniture. "Glad I didn't set you back on the road to recovery."

"Oh! No, I didn't mean-"

I sat down on the bed next to her suitcase. The frame creaked and groaned like an exasperated geezer. "Look, Sarah, let's not kid each other, okay? We're not best buddies; we never were. I'm not judging you, I'm just saying you're here because I'm all you've got. Right? So you don't have to pretend to like me."

She looked just like me, in that second-wide-eyed with surprise, and a little frown crinkling her forehead. Except for the hair. Even my current poodle-hair curls were better than the badly grown-out shag she was sporting.

She said, slowly, "All right, I admit it. I didn't like you when you were younger. You were a bratty kid, and then you grew up into somebody I barely even know. And you're weird, you know. And Mom liked you best."

No arguing with that one. Mom really had.

But Sarah kept going. "That doesn't mean I don't love you, Jo. I always have loved you. I hope you still love me. I know I'm a bitch, and I'm shallow, but we're still, you know, sisters."

It would have been a warm, tender moment if I'd jumped up and thrown my arms around her and burst into tears. We weren't that kind of Hallmark Card family.

I thought it over and said, "I don't really know you, Sarah. But I'm willing to get to know you."

She smiled. Slow, but real.

"That sounds... fair."

We shook hands on it. I stood up and watched as Sarah unzipped the suitcase