Breaking Emily's Rules

Dad had loved this dog and swore it could read his thoughts. Right now, Stone wondered if Winston could read his, too, because they were less than charitable.

“You interrupted a great dream, monster.” The first decent dream in months.

Stone pulled on a pair of jeans and headed to the kitchen, Winston following close behind. True to form, he performed his shameless circling dance as Stone scooped out the dry dog food and placed it in his bowl.

“Wish I could be that happy to have breakfast,” Stone mumbled, placing the bowl on the cold terracotta kitchen floor. “Do you realize all you do is eat and sleep?”

He’d not only inherited Winston, the flight school and his father’s ramshackle ranch house, but pretty much James Mcallister’s life. And if he often felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room, it was probably because too many people, dogs and inanimate objects depended on him.

He’d arrived in town with one large duffel bag and everything he owned in it. He was always ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

The doorbell rang, and Winston ran out of the room like a scared schoolgirl. Doorbells. Winston was afraid of them. Then again, Dad’s doorbell played a haunting rendition of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” Stone kept meaning to disconnect the thing.

Stone peered through the peephole. Staff Sergeant Matt Conner, wearing his civilian clothes, held a couple of cups. “Let me in, asshole. These are hot. Coffee.”

Stone swung open the door and accepted a cup from The Drip (Rise and Shine and Have a Drip, the annoying cup said) as Matt walked inside.

“Is he—?” Matt asked, eyebrows raised.

Stone nodded. “Put the cup down now if you know what’s good for you.”

Matt set the cup on the short key table by the door and squatted like a wrestler. Yeah, he knew the drill. Like he’d heard his name called, Winston flew around the corner and tackled Matt.

Fortunately, Matt was a dog person, not to mention the size of a linebacker. “Hey, I love you, too, you big lug.”

“Don’t encourage him.” Stone walked into the kitchen, taking a gulp of the coffee he had become addicted to. He’d never been there himself, but coffee from The Drip was first-rate; although, he’d never get used to saying that name. “Want something to eat?”

“You have food?” Matt followed.

Stone didn’t answer. All right, so he was stalling.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Let’s get to it. Where do we begin?” Matt threw him a look.

“Yeah.” Stone knew that look. It was a get your shit together, airman look. If he’d given it once, he’d given it a hundred times to the newbs. And it had been more than a few years since he’d been on this side of it. It didn’t sit well with him.

Sure, he’d helped pack up the barracks bags of airmen who were never going home again, but this was different.

My father’s house. Where to begin? No matter how he sliced it, it didn’t feel right to get rid of Dad’s things. Like maybe he’d be back later, pissed Stone couldn’t see the sense in hanging on to ten old fishing rods. Crazy.

“Yeah’s not an answer, dude.” Matt threw him a pity look, the kind bestowed upon the widows and orphans of the men who weren’t coming back.

“Where do you suggest, moron?”

“The clothes.” Matt met Stone’s gaze.

They were still in the closet. Pretty pathetic. Clothes were always the first thing to go. It wasn’t like he was going to suddenly start wearing plaid shirts and polyester pants.

“Right this way.”

Winston followed them in the bedroom and lay like a rug near Dad’s bed. Stone made himself shove shirts and pants, even an old suit he’d never seen before, into a plastic garbage bag.

Matt worked faster, bagging up two to every one of Stone’s. “I’ll take all these to Goodwill Industries.”

“Sure.” Stone didn’t look at Matt. They were just clothes. It shouldn’t make any damn difference. He didn’t understand why his chest felt tight.

“By the way, she came by to see me again yesterday.” Matt said it like it was nothing, like he might as well be talking about the weather.

“Why?” Stone didn’t even have to ask who “she” was. She’d somehow decided Matt was her new best friend.

“You know why. She wants to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to her.”

“She’s your sister,” Matt said with an emphasis on the word sister, as if it was supposed to mean something to Stone. It didn’t.

Not his fault. His parents had made that decision, and he’d had no say in the matter. Only now, he was left to pick up the pieces. All in the past, and best left there. He wasn’t going to start singing “Kumbaya” this late in the game. “Here’s the thing. I don’t know her anymore.”

“You could get to know her. Again.” Matt threw another bag in the pile.

But it had been Sarah’s choice to stop visiting summers after that last one when she’d been thirteen. He’d been fifteen at the time, and sue him if he’d been a little busy. Their parents had each agreed that by fourteen each kid could decide where they wanted to spend their summer. That summer Stone chose to stay in California where he had a job and a learner’s permit. It meant that he’d spent the summer with his sister for the first time since the divorce. Looking back, he probably hadn’t paid her enough attention but what he’d remembered of that summer was a teenage girl with attitude. Not much different from now.

Dad didn’t know what the hell to do with her, either, when she didn’t want to fish or camp anymore. Every morning she’d glare daggers at the both of them as if they were doing something to offend her by simply breathing. Then she’d gone in the bathroom for three hours where she did something to her hair.

It was about all he remembered of that last summer from hell.

The next summer Sarah chose not to visit again, nor any summer after that. There had been cards over the holidays and a few strained phone calls. Stone had unfortunately had a front-row seat to his father’s confusion and pain at feeling shut out of his daughter’s life. It had served to remind Stone to call his mother and not just wait for her calls to him. He might not have thought he needed her much as a stupid teenager, but he’d always loved his mother. Which was why he couldn’t quite understand Sarah’s anger now. She’d made the choice. If their father hadn’t begged, it was because the Mcallister men didn’t beg.

Stone surveyed the closet. They’d made a dent in it, but not much more. He’d leave the boxes on the shelves for another time. Had his father thrown anything away? Ever?

Stone reached for a tie that looked straight out of the seventies. Probably not. “Maybe we should have a family reunion. Picnic, maybe?”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“She wants to sell to a developer. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You could talk and explain this is what your Dad wanted.”

“She knows that. All she wants is more money. She doesn’t care that people are about to lose their livelihoods.” It wasn’t just Cassie and Jedd. The airport had a small air museum, the only one of its kind for miles. There was also the Shortstop Snack Shack, owned and operated by a retired firefighter. Dad had owned the hangar building and leased the space to everyone else. The aviation school was the anchor, and if it was sold to a developer all the other businesses would go, too.

“I get the feeling your sister might be reasonable. Why not meet with her?”

“I did.” All she’d wanted to do was hurl insults and accusations at their late father. He carried enough guilt about those last months without Sarah adding to it.

“Again, I mean.” Matt slid him a look. “One meeting that didn’t go well isn’t enough. It’s worth a try.”

But Stone wasn’t sure of that anymore. He should talk with Sarah again, to see if he could get her to see reason. Matt seemed to think she was open, but that hadn’t been Stone’s experience. Some people were a lost cause, and he felt fairly certain the sister he didn’t know anymore was one of them.

CHAPTER THREE

“WAKE UP, EMILY.”

Emily opened one eye.

Grammy stood over her, dressed in her sparkly blue jeans and leopard-print top. It was one of the most irritating things about her grandmother. She refused to give in to convention and wear tracksuits like all her friends did.

Emily hadn’t even heard her come in. “What good is it to give me the loft for privacy if you keep barging in on me like this? What if I had company?”

“Emily, dear, please. I don’t have time for jokes. We have the Chamber of Commerce party today. I’ll need you to help George. He’s an old man now.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

George Carver had worked for the family for as long as Emily could remember. Old or not, he was still their handyman, their gardener and a long-time family friend.

Emily’s dog, Pookie, a Poodle and Chihuahua mix, peeked out from the under the covers.

“You’re letting Pookie in your bed? What’s wrong with you?”

“She’d old, Grammy, and it was cold out last night. I caught her shivering.” That was Emily’s story and she was sticking to it. Growing up on their pseudo ranch usually meant dogs lived outside, but Emily liked it better this way. If Grammy was going to let Emily have the loft over the garage, then Emily could let Pookie have a spot on her bed at night.

“Girl, your heart is just too big. Pookie has you fooled. She’s fine outside and has a warm dry place in the pen. Cuddles up next to Beast every chance she gets. Anyway, the meat is coming in at noon, and I’ll need you to check it. You know what happened last time.” Grammy started to make the bed with Emily in it.

“Hey. Why don’t you let me get out of bed first? What time is it?” Fighting to push off the last dregs of sleep, Emily pulled the covers up to her nose. She wasn’t sure, but she might have been in the middle of a dream that made her blush, even thinking of it. It might have involved Stone and some of that horizontal dancing.

“It’s time for you to get up. And there’s something I want to show you first.” Grammy walked toward the front door and put her hand on the doorknob.

“What is it?” Emily rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. Eight thirty. Too bad Grammy didn’t believe in sleeping in even on the weekends, because right now all Emily wanted was another few minutes. And she wasn’t going to get them.

“Wait till you see. I ordered it and it came yesterday. I’ll meet you at the house for breakfast.” Grammy let herself out, but not before picking up Pookie and carrying her out. “Dogs stay outside.”

Emily rustled her feet from under the warm covers and let them touch the cool hardwood. She shrank back and resisted the urge to bury under the blanket and go back to her dreams. Dreams in which she’d gone home with Stone.

Forget about him. I’m not ready for someone like that, and maybe I never will be. No, she was never going to be “that girl.” The girl who didn’t worry about consequences. The one who took a chance. She was too sensible for all that.

Emily showered, tried not to think of Stone, dried off and dressed in the working jeans and Fortune Ranch company shirt she wore while working on the family’s ranch. Not that it was a ranch anymore, unless one counted a petting zoo and three ponies. But Grammy insisted on keeping the name, a testament to the former glory of the Parker family’s four-hundred-acre cattle ranch of days gone by.

After eminent domain and the freeway extension had made its way through, they’d been left with forty acres and the house. Thank God for ever-resourceful Grammy, who claimed she hadn’t lived through the depression for nothing. And even if the family business now came down to outdoor company parties, picnics and high school Sadie Hawkins dances, they still had their home.

Thank heavens for that, because right now Emily needed home. The place where she’d grown up and the last place she’d lived with Mama. She’d been gone seventeen years, but her absence still ached if Emily thought about it too much.

Emily made her way down the creaky steps of her second-story apartment loft above the detached garage and jogged over to the main Victorian house on the hill. She threw open the side door to the kitchen and walked in to the sounds of Molly’s high-pitched voice. “That’s it—you’ve finally taken the last train into Crazy Town, and this time I’m not sure you’ll be back.”

“What’s up?” Emily grabbed a mug from the cupboard.

Molly and Grammy stood before some type of large vase on the kitchen counter.

“Grammy has done it now.” Molly looked like she’d woken only minutes ago and stood in the middle of the kitchen wearing her oversize Hairdressers Do It with Style T-shirt, hair mussed and eyes bloodshot with the after effects of too much tequila.

“Once again, your sister is demonstrating how short-sighted she can be. This is where I’ll be buried—my ashes will be, anyway. And I want you girls to pick the perfect place where I’ll be seated for all eternity. I was thinking somewhere in the dining room.”

That thing sitting on the kitchen counter was an urn? No wonder Molly was freaked out. Emily wasn’t sure she could ever eat food in here again. “Can we take it off the kitchen counter?”

“For the love of Pete, you girls act like I bought a used urn. This was ordered from the most highly regarded crematorium in the state. Don’t you think it’s nice?” Grammy ran her hand along the little pink roses that decorated the border.

Emily couldn’t look at the place where her Grammy’s bones would someday lie. “Can’t we do this another time?”

Grammy waved a hand. “Fine. I’ll find a place in the dining room. This way I’ll be in attendance at every Thanksgiving and Christmas even after I’m gone. Now, I’ll be watching over you all, so don’t forget to say grace.”

“Oh, Daddy is going to love this,” Molly said with an eye roll.

“Your father isn’t any of my concern. He spends half his time in Texas pretending he’s a cowboy when he ought to be home with his family,” Grammy shouted over her shoulder as she left the room with her urn.

The subject of their father and his reluctance to let go of the cattle ranch days was one Emily couldn’t handle before noon. Or plenty of coffee.

She eyed the bacon and eggs Grammy had left on a warming platter, considering whether or not she still had an appetite.

“I was thinking—” Molly said with a grin.

“Don’t you dare.” Emily pointed a finger.

“I’ll be good this time. Okay, I should have stayed away from the tequila shots. And Thomas.”

“That would have been nice.”

“But we should go see if we can find that nice man who helped us with Thomas. And then I can apologize.”

Emily sat at the kitchen table and thought about how much she’d like to thank Stone. But she wouldn’t need Molly for that. “I’m not going back there for a while.”

“Why? I saw you dancing with him. And you looked happy. What have you got against happy?”

“I don’t have anything against it. I have something against starting a relationship right now. I have to work on myself.”

“Who said anything about a relationship?” Molly drew the last word out, emphasizing every syllable. “Why does everything have to be a big deal to you? Can’t you just have fun?”

Of course she couldn’t have fun. She had plans to make, and they didn’t involve a man. Emily opened her mouth to answer, but Grammy walked back in the kitchen and spoke first.

“What you need to do is learn from your big sister, young lady. Sometimes a lady needs to take a good long look at her life to find out where she’s going. It wouldn’t hurt you to do the same.” Grammy reached for a mug and poured some coffee in it.

Molly rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I forgot Little Miss Perfect does everything right.”

Emily winced at the moniker, but what was so wrong with setting goals and controlling one’s future? For so long, she’d been the only one with any good sense in this family. Dad out in Texas playing cowboy, Molly pretending she hadn’t screwed up the best thing in her life and Grammy planning her own funeral.

Either way, it was time for Plan B, since none of her best-laid plans had worked out.

Like real estate. She’d bought the course on the late-night infomercial, but nothing was like the book said it would be. Her attempt at writing a historical romance hadn’t done any better. And if it wasn’t for the stage fright that kept her from returning to the stage, maybe she could get that country music career off the ground.

Either way, she had to figure something out, because she was running out of time.

Molly had struck a nerve when she talked about ticking clocks. It wasn’t that Emily wanted a baby—she’d given up that dream—but reminders of how little she’d accomplished in her twenty-eight years weren’t welcome. She’d recently read in one of her college alumni newsletters that a former classmate had founded her own clothing company and another was running for a congressional seat in her district.

Emily needed something like that. Something big.

Grammy patted Emily’s back. “Nothing wrong with being a good girl, right, dear?”

Good Girl. Yeah, that was her. Another name might be Doormat. “Never said I was perfect.”

“Don’t forget tomorrow is our monthly meeting with the Pink Ladies. I know you won’t want to miss it, Emily.” Grammy sat across from Emily.

“Why are you encouraging her?” Molly slammed her coffee mug on the table. “That’s exactly what Emily needs. Hanging out with a bunch of geriatric women. That should do it.”

“Your sister has a hobby, and maybe you can find one, too,” Grammy said with a scowl.

“I have a hobby. It’s called dancing. Meanwhile you waste your time talking about dead people that can’t do a thing for you anymore.” Molly took a gulp from her mug and gave Emily a pointed look.

Emily shook her head. “I love when you both talk about me like I’m not here. What if I’m interested in our family history? What’s wrong with trying to find out all about my namesake?”

“That Emily Parker isn’t going to help you. Because there’s a little problem. She’s dead.”

“Listen, young lady. Never speak ill of the dead. Someday I’ll be one of them.” Grammy reached over and swatted Molly’s hand.

Molly walked over to the sink with her mug. “Someday we’ll all be one of them. But before that, let’s have a little bit of damn fun before we all die, why don’t we?”

Grammy laughed at Molly’s back as she walked out of the kitchen. “Oh, Molly, dear, you are so dramatic. Learn to be a little bit more like your sister. Level-headed. Grounded.”

Emily almost choked on her coffee. Was that what she was? Level-headed? Grounded? Why did that sound boring?

Emily had spent the past year in a kind of self-imposed hibernation with little interest in anything other than eating, sleeping and watching reruns of the first three seasons of Homeland.

But then a few months ago Grammy had come to her with some genealogy research. She wanted to find out whether her family had come from Ireland or Scotland. One of Grammy’s Historical Society friends had traced her ancestors back to the Revolutionary War. Naturally, Grammy was convinced they could do better than that. They only needed to trace the family lineage back far enough and the truth of the spunky and steady Parker spirit would be revealed. It had all started out simply, with a bit of online searches, and before Emily knew it, she’d been spending most of her spare time with Grammy’s friends.

Then Molly had come back home. Suddenly genealogy research was a hobby for the geriatric crowd.

“I’ll quit when I find out what happened to the first Emily Parker.” Time to reevaluate, perhaps, the amount of time she spent on this hobby. A little diversity couldn’t hurt. Getting out from under this “good girl” image couldn’t hurt, either.

* * *

MOLLY TRUDGED UP the steps to her bedroom, and threw herself on the trundle bed. Everyone in her family was officially bonkers, fascinated with the past and dead people when there was so much living to be done right now. Emily was too young to hang out with all those old women, but Molly couldn’t seem to get through to her. Yet.

She’d get Emily back out on the dance floor, or her nickname wasn’t Trouble.

She reached under the mattress and pulled out the photo of Sierra at six months old. She’d just learned to sit up and wore a bib that read Daddy’s Girl as she smiled her toothless grin. Molly traced the angle of her baby face. Oh, how she remembered that smile. It was the last picture Molly took of Sierra before she left town. Dylan had been working long hours and left her alone with Sierra night and day. They could have all lived at the Parker family home and Molly would have had help from both Grammy and Emily, but Dylan had insisted they live on their own. Raise Sierra on their own. Insisted he’d support his own family, and that meant they were stuck in a studio apartment.

That same studio apartment had felt more like a Love Shack when they’d first been married, right after they’d learned of her pregnancy, and made love every night. But once Sierra arrived, everything changed. Dylan had been too tired to do anything but collapse in a heap at the end of the day.

Emily had offered to help but Molly was so ashamed of her mess. Ashamed that she couldn’t stop crying some days. She couldn’t figure out how to take a shower and at the same time take care of her baby. And after every time Emily had come over, Dylan had nothing but praises for her big sister. Emily sure knows how to clean a house. Or, Did you fold and put away all this laundry, or did Em? On and on he’d go about her wonderful big sister and how Molly could learn a lot from her.

Emily wasn’t a spoiled Daddy’s girl like Molly, Dylan would say. And now that she was a mother, she had to give up on being Daddy’s girl. But Daddy seemed to be the only one who realized when Molly was way in over her head. Which, according to him, was pretty much always.

Molly swallowed the sob in her throat and picked up her cell phone. She dialed her father, who was out at their Texas cattle ranch instead of at home where he belonged.

“Daddy?” Molly whispered into the phone.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Daddy answered with the Texas twang that grated on her nerves.

But leave it to her daddy to always realize when something was wrong. “I’m bored here. When are you coming home?

“I’ll come home next week, for sure.”

“I’ve been back home two months and seen you once.”

“The ranch out here keeps me busy. Doesn’t Emily keep you company?”

“She’s no fun anymore.”

“Your sister has been through a rough time. You go easy on her. Have you seen your daughter yet?”

“I don’t know if Dylan is going to let me.” Dylan had been furious when she’d left. She was still a little bit afraid to face him.

“It’s not for him to let you or not let you. You’re that baby’s momma and nothing can keep you from seeing her.”

That’s what Daddy thought, but Molly knew Dylan wouldn’t make it easy. He’d warned her when she’d left that if she didn’t come home immediately, she could forget about coming back. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

“You do that, little Trouble. You made a mistake and some people just have to be big enough to forgive you.”

More than anything, she wished Daddy was right about that. Molly hung up and stared at the ceiling, trying to swallow the golf ball in her throat. I’m not going to cry. Not today. I should be all cried out by now.

She stuffed Sierra’s photo back under her mattress.

What she wanted to do and what she could do were two different things. Right now, a little fun wasn’t going to kill her.

Anything to forget about the photo that lay pressed under her mattress of the little baby girl with red hair, just like her mommy’s.

* * *

THE PINK LADIES Genealogical Society gals were in good spirits on Sunday, mostly because Grammy had whipped up her famous wine-based margaritas. It didn’t matter everyone knew the recipe originally belonged to George, who called them Po’man Margaritas.