Read Wishing On A Starr for Free Online

dunce. “I just woke up...and fell out of bed.”
    Daniel chuckled. “That explains the cursing.”
    She laughed.
    “Sorry for waking you up. I can call you back later, if you’d like?”
    “No. Uh, I mean, that won’t be necessary.” Gia rolled her eyes at her air-headed behavior. “I’m up now.”
    He laughed with her, but then an awkward silence vibrated over the line.
    Should she say something?
    “I have to tell you, I was afraid I would never see you again,” Daniel jumpstarted the conversation.
    “Oh?” She climbed off the floor.
    “Yeah, I lost your business card somewhere near the Rockefeller Center, but then this morning I found it bubble-gummed to the bottom of my shoe. You can’t imagine my relief.”
    “Well I’m glad you found it...especially since you dipped without giving me your number.”
    “Oh,” he managed to sound contrite. “I owe you an explanation for that.”
    “I am curious...but you don’t owe me an explanation.” Gia rubbed the side of her pounding head and strolled toward her bathroom.
    “Then to appease your curiosity, I was trying to get away before my beautiful daughter, who has the best of intentions, by the way, showed up and scared you off.”
    “Should I be worried?” She switched on a light and winced at her horrible reflection. She looked worse than she felt.
    “No, no. Once you get to know her, you hardly notice how she winds you around her finger.”
    Her smile widened. “She sounds adorable. How old is she?” she asked, opening the medicine cabinet and reaching for the Advil.
    “She’ll be fifteen on Christmas Day.”
    Gia froze with her hand clamped around the headache medicine. Her mind instantly filled with images of the delivery room and a nurse rushing off with her newborn child.
    “Don’t worry. We’re going to take good care of her...”
    “Of course, I think she’s fourteen going on forty.” He sighed. “But she’s the absolute apple of my eye.” Daniel chuckled.
    Jolting out of the memory, Gia snatched the Advil out of the cabinet and popped the top.
    “What about you?” he asked. “Do you have any kids?”
    Gia closed her eyes, but not in time to prevent a lone tear from streaking down her face as she croaked out the lie she’d told for nearly fifteen years, “No.”
     
     
    “Ma Belle is dying,” Glenda announced. She lifted her gaze from her fidgeting fingers to meet Byron’s hard stare through the jail’s Plexiglas. She watched as her brother’s hand tightened around the phone before he finally drew in a deep breath.
    “How long?” he asked.
    Doctor said it would be a miracle if she lives until Christmas.
    Byron’s face lost none of its intensity. She knew he was wondering-hoping that his release date of December twenty-third wouldn’t be too late to say his final goodbyes.
    “I can’t imagine...”
    Glenda nodded. He wasn’t about to say anything that she hadn’t said to herself a thousand times since she was given the news. Ma Belle, though most believed her to be a little rough around the edges, was truly a remarkable woman with the best of intentions. She was a woman with a limited amount of everything: education, money, and resources. Everyone in the family loved her, except maybe...
    “Have you talked with Gia?” Byron asked.
    Glenda’s gaze dropped.
    “You have to call her,” Byron said.
    Glenda closed her eyes. “What’s the point? There’s nothing she can do.”
    “Ma Belle would like to see her again.”
    “That ain’t what she’s been telling me.” Glenda looked up again.
    “What Ma Belle says ain’t always what she means. We both know that. I might not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox, but even I know Ma Belle’s heart been broken ever since Gia left Talboton.”
    “I seem to recall Gia’s heart broken way before she left this stinking town.” Glenda grew hot under the collar.
    “More reasons for those two to bury the hatchet.”
    Glenda shook her head. “You just don’t