Read Gilt for Free Online

would you think that?"
    John stared past me at Michael. "Ask him why he's so worried. Ask him why he cares."
    I blinked in surprise. "Michael, why are you so worried? What do you think they'll find?"
    "It doesn't matter what I think. They've called in the FBI. An agent is on his way here now. Who knows what might be raked up?"
    Bing Crosby's Pennies from Heaven chimed from my purse, a sign that my mother and my iPhone were trying to contact me. "Sorry. I need to take this. My aunt has been sick and my mom said she'd call and update me." I fumbled the phone from the side pocket of my bag and opened the case, peering at the screen. Yep. There was my mother's smiling face in the photo taken last Christmas.
    "Hey, Mom," I murmured, pushing away from Paul and Michael and meandering toward the bookcases. John started to follow me but something Paul said made him pause and turn back to the two men. I was happy not to have him near me. I don't know what unnerved me more: that he was there or that I was accepting his presence with such calmness.
    "How are things?" my mother asked.
    I pulled a book at random off a shelf. Kings and Queens of Seventeenth Century England. I stuffed it back among its fellows. "Good. How about you?"
    "Same old same old. Are you still planning to come this weekend?"
    I closed my eyes, imagining my mother, Penny Atwood, sitting on her chintz couch and staring through the window at the oak tree in the front yard of the family home in Tangle Butte. It was only ninety miles to the south, so it was probably raining there, too. "Weather permitting."
    "You don't have to," Penny said immediately. "I'm perfectly fine here."
    We had this conversation at every holiday for the fifteen years since my Dad died. Penny was anxious that I not feel obligated. I was anxious for Penny to know that I didn't feel obligated. "I know you're fine," I said patiently. "I enjoy spending holidays with you. How are Sam and Jimmy?"
    My gambit worked to divert her attention. My mother filled me in on my younger brother, Sam, and his new job, after which she gave her opinion about Sam's daughter's new boyfriend. Mom was always ready to express an opinion about the love lives of her offspring, whether she knew the love interest or not. She moved on to my other brother, Jimmy, who had recently started working as a security guard at a Las Vegas casino.
    I peeked through the bookcase to check on Paul and Michael. They didn't appear to miss my presence but were talking intently, heads almost touching across the table. John leaned near, listening. If it hadn't been so surreal, I would have laughed. The Tall, the Dark, and the Handsome were together again--sort of.
    "He's forty-five years old," Penny complained. "You'd think he would settle down and get a real job someday. I'll bet his girlfriend's a stripper. You know he isn't the sharpest tack in the box when it comes to women."
    I nodded in silent agreement. Jimmy was three-times divorced, with each marriage shorter than the last. And then there was Sam, married for twenty years with three kids. We had all drifted away from our Midwest roots, with Jimmy going west, Sam going east, and me moving north to the Twin Cities. Our mother was like a lightning rod in the center of the country that collected information and disseminated it to everyone at all corners of the U.S.
    "Well, that's not why I called. I took Portia to the doctor and they ran tests. The doctor seemed concerned."
    "She's ninety years old, Mom." Aunt Portia was my father's older sister. Portia and Penny were fast friends as well as sisters-in-law. "They're bound to find something wrong."
    "I realize that, dear, but it's worrisome," Mom said. "I don't like her all alone on the farm. Maybe when you come home you can talk to her, see if she'll hire a live-in nurse."
    "Doesn't she lease the land? Doesn't someone farm the field near the house?" I checked titles on the shelf nearest me. Europe on the Cheap: Where to Go, What to Know . I