Tawny finished her beer and set the empty can on the porch. “Have you forgiven her for what she said and did to you? It was awful at the house after you left. I begged them to let me move here and live with Granny.”
Harper inhaled so deep that her lungs hurt and then let it out slowly. “I forgave her a long time ago. She’s not worth the pain and suffering. I just hope that I got Granny Annie’s big heart when it comes to children and not hers,” Harper answered.
Tawny scooted over and braced her back against the porch post. “You think you’ll ever have kids? You willin’ to take that kind of chance?”
Harper shrugged. “Are you?”
“I like kids, so maybe if the right man came along,” Tawny answered. “What happened to all of those puppies?”
“I didn’t leave that job until I’d found a good home for each of them.” Harper nodded.
“That’s good,” Tawny said. “Maybe we should send Mama a picture of the two of us huggin’ a Doberman.”
“Wouldn’t do a bit of good. She’s never had to admit that she was wrong. Daddy adored her and let her run the place and us. She’d just wonder why in the hell we were sending her a picture of us with a dog,” Harper chuckled.
“Probably so. Good night.” Tawny groaned when she got to her feet. “Too many hours sitting in front of a computer, but I think I’m getting this business figured out.”
“Try standing on your feet all day,” Harper said.
“No, thanks. I’ll take kinks over aching arches.”
When Brook was a little girl, she and Dana had watched animated cartoons, and then slowly they’d graduated to more mature movies and even television series on either Friday or Saturday nights. Brook’s newest love was MacGyver, a remake of an older show that now had two seasons on DVDs, so they usually ended the week by watching it over and over. But that night she’d gone off to the mall with Tawny, and Dana felt the emptiness as she sat on the grass at the edge of the lake.
Down around Houston, when someone mentioned a beach, visions of sand, seagulls, and water all the way to the horizon came to mind. But in north central Texas, the image changed to green grass, ducks, and lights in the summer homes on the other side of the lake.
Get used to it. That’s why you have sisters. The kid grows up and leaves home, and you’d have no one if it weren’t for your sisters. The voice sounded a lot like her grandmother’s.
“You didn’t have sisters or brothers, Granny,” Dana argued.
Harper sat down a few feet from her. “Who are you talkin’ to?”
“You startled me,” Dana said. “What’re you doin’ here? I figured you’d be gettin’ into trouble in that bar up the road.”
“Didn’t feel like it tonight. Do you always talk to yourself, or do you have a feller hidin’ up in the trees?” Harper asked. “We should’ve brought marshmallows.”
“I remember when we used to do that when you girls were with us in the summertime.” Zed appeared out of the darkness from the other direction. “We’d start us up a fire down here on the edge of the water and have hot dogs and them things with graham crackers for dessert.”
“They were s’mores. Roasted marshmallow crammed between two graham crackers along with a piece of chocolate candy bar. Pull up a chair or a piece of the grass and join us, Uncle Zed.” Harper pointed to the area between them.
He eased down a couple of feet from Harper. “That’s right. Me and Annie built us up a bonfire and made them things a few times, but it wasn’t the same when you girls weren’t here with us. I’m missin’ her real bad tonight. The walls in my room got to closin’ in on me, so I came out for a walk. She loved it when the trees started gettin’ leaves and folks started fillin’ up the summer places.”
“My favorite memories of her are in the store,” Dana said. “She kept me while Mama went to school to get her cosmetology license and then afterward while Mama worked.”
“Did you ever know Grandpa?” Harper glanced over at Dana.
“No, he was already gone when I was born,” Dana answered.
They sat in silence for ten minutes, and then Zed slowly rose to his feet and started back up the trail toward Annie’s Place.
“You okay?” Harper called out before he disappeared.
“I’m better. It helped just to sit with y’all a spell. I can feel her presence in among us when you girls are all together. Especially when you ain’t bickerin’.”
“See,” Harper whispered, “he’s not as sad when we try to get along.”
Dana rose to her feet. “I’ve got a movie and some popcorn if you want to join me in the house. Tawny said she’d bring Brook home by eleven.”
“Think we could stand each other for two hours without arguin’? Uncle Zed isn’t going to be there, you know.”
“I’m willin’ to give it a try if you are,” Dana answered.
“What movie you got?” Harper gracefully went from sitting cross-legged to a standing position.
“Lots of them. You can even choose.” She never thought she’d feel that way, but time with Harper beat being totally alone for the next three hours.
The path from the lake to the house wasn’t far, but neither of them said anything. Dana stepped inside the house with Harper right behind her and stopped in the middle of the living room. “It seems like she should be coming out of the kitchen with a pan of brownies in her hand for us to eat while we play some board game,” Harper said.
Dana laid a hand on Harper’s shoulder. “I feel the same way, and I’ve been livin’ in this house more than a week. If I was into hocus-pocus stuff, I’d say her spirit isn’t happy and it’s tryin’ to tell us something.”
“Is the Ouija board still somewhere in the house?” Harper flopped down on the sofa. “That thing scared the bejesus right out of me. If it’s under the bed or in the hall closet, we should take it down to the lake and toss it into the water.”
“Haven’t seen it, thank goodness. It scared me, too. Want a beer or a glass of sweet tea?”
“Tea, please. Why wouldn’t she be happy? We’re all here and, with the help of Uncle Zed, keepin’ the place going. We’ve done pretty good this past week, in my opinion,” Harper said.
Dana brought in two tall glasses of tea and set them on the coffee table. “Considerin’ that it’s us, we’ve probably broken the record for doing good. Popcorn or trail mix?”
Harper picked up a glass and took a sip. “Trail mix, if it’s what you made when we were here last time. The kind with M&M’s in it?”
“Brook’s favorite. I make it at least once a month,” Dana yelled from the kitchen.
She took a bowlful to the living room and opened the hall closet where she’d stored the collection of movies that she’d brought with her. When she turned around, Harper was right behind her.
“Sweet Lord!” she gasped.
“What?” Dana asked.
“That’s a lot of movies. You should put them in the store and rent them out to the folks who stay in the cabins.” Harper ran her finger down the rows and rows, arranged alphabetically by the first letter in the title.