Read The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box for Free Online

Gina’s portion was to be 120 acres of irrigated Tidewater cropland. Eighty acres and the house were to go to me.
    My grandmother thought of everything, except the fact that I might still be underage when death took her, and Gina might be fully legal, out of foster care, and on her own. And that Gina might be the only one to learn of our inheritance. Who knows why the news never reached me. In an overburdened Human Services system, channels don’t always connect. Because the legal division of the land never happened, Gina and I own it as tenants in common, and she’s been able to operate the place all these years without my knowing a thing.
    Of all the things Gina has ever done, including dropping into my life on Hatteras last year and trying her best to ruin everything , this is the worst.
    She knows there has never been a place in the world that meant more to me than this farm. She knows that after my father ran off and CPS took us from my mother, I pleaded for the social workers to bring us here instead of moving us to an emergency foster home. Gina knows that I ran away three times, trying to get back to Meemaw and Pap-pap—that I told caseworker after judge after teacher that none of my mother’s horrible claims about Pap-pap were true. No one would listen.
    Gina knows that the scuppernong vines and the bayberry tangles and the mulberry orchard could have given me the healing I needed after the ragged patchwork of our childhood finally fell apart.
    When my sister came to visit me in my future forever home the year I turned sixteen, she must have known we’d inherited the property. She never mentioned a thing. Instead, she marveled at the bedroom my new family had given me. She was impressed by the white board fences and sprawling horse barns, yet she tried to persuade me to leave it all and come with her. We were sisters, she pointed out, and sisters should stick together.
    When I wouldn’t leave with her, all she said was, Oh yeah, by the way, the old folks are dead. He had a stroke a couple years ago, and they both croaked in the nursing home—just so you know. See ya. Have fun here at the Ponderosa . . . that is, till these people decide they’re tired of their new toy, because that’s always how it is. Nobody wants to just get a teenager, Tandi Jo. It’ll wear off. When it does, come find me. I’ll be around. . . .
    I could still picture my sister—tall, blonde, as beautiful as the models in Seventeen magazine—delivering the blow with a sympathetic smile.
    The trouble with sisters is they know exactly where the tender places are. Gina has always known how to find all of mine.
    I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do when I catch up to her, but possible scenarios abound. In my mind, I’m everything from John Wayne to a ninja torture artist.
    The phone rings, and for some crazy reason, I imagine it’s her. That somehow she knows I’m headed her way at nuclear missile velocity. I grab my cell and bark out, “Hello.”
    “Whoa,” Paul says on the other end. “You all right?”
    “Yes . . .” Deep breath. Don’t say anything, a voice inside me whispers, the usual instinctive reaction. Leftovers from a childhood of knowing that if you’re too much trouble, people will walk out the door, or worse.
    Tell him, I admonish myself. Be honest. That’s what love is—dropping all the barricades. I know Paul loves me. I know I love him. Why is this still so hard? “No,” I finally admit. “No, I’m not okay. . . .”
    The story—what I know of it so far—spills out, and the anger that had been my power, my supply of venom, wanes. In its wake comes incredible pain. I want a sister who wouldn’t do something like this. Ever.
    “Honey, stop the car, okay?” Paul interrupts. “Pull over, stop the car, and calm down a minute. I’m afraid you’re gonna end up wrapped around a tree.”
    He’s right. I’ve been flying down the rural highway like an idiot. I slow down and pull over by