tone? My tone?”
“Yes, that condescending one!” She turned around and faced the front of her house, then gasped.
“What’s wrong?” I got out of my chair.
“Oh, nothing. It’s nothing. ” She turned around, fiddled with her apron.
I moved toward the front window, so I could see the walkway in front of her houseboat. I saw a man. Brown hair. Tall, a loping stride, bigger nose than normal, but not too big. Not big enough to snarf down a fish. I figured he lived in the houseboat down the way.
I turned around. Grinned at Janie.
“Don’t even think about it—” she breathed.
“Is that?” I raised my eyebrows, laughed, and made a dart for the door.
“Oh, no, you do not, Isabelle Bommarito!”
I opened the door and the rain came on in.
“Come back here, right this minute!”
But I had already stepped over the threshold to the wood walkway. She was right behind me and grabbed me around the waist, both arms. “Don’t you dare.”
I whispered, struggling, “I can help you to meet him—”
“I don’t need your help!” she hissed.
“Let go of me, Janie,” I whispered. “I’m helping you!”
I tried to pursue Big Nose, but she held on to me like a human octopus, one leg twisted around mine, both of us grunting with effort. “Get off of me.”
“Never.” She tightened her arms and lifted.
I wiggled around and tackled her and we ended up in a heap by her front door. Both of us went, “Ugh,” when the air knocked out of our lungs. I held both her arms down, then whisked myself off her zippity quick and got a few steps. She scrambled up after me, her footsteps thudding, and shoved me to the ground. We rolled twice to the left, twice to the right, huffing and puffing.
She yanked at my ankle, tried to drag me back in. “You’re always trying to butt in—”
“I am not trying to butt in.” I tried to kick her hand with my other foot as she yanked me halfway into the air. I had no idea how she got so strong. “You need to get out of the house and live,” I panted. “I’ve been hearing about that man for months—”
“There you go again! That’s your definition of living!” She wiped rain off her face. “I don’t want to sleep with each stud I meet! I want to find common interests, like a love of literature and the orchestra…and scones and tea! Besides, some of us like preserving ourselves for marriage!”
“What marriage?” I shrieked. “You can’t get married unless you date, and dating takes being able to say hello to a person of the male species from this planet.”
She flew at me like a little torpedo and landed on top of me, my face smashed down.
“Do you think it’s healthy to stay home all day thinking up ways to kill people?” I huffed out, rain running down my neck.
“Do you think it’s healthy,” she huffed back, “to put a wall between yourself and everybody else?”
I whipped her over to her back. “Do you think it’s healthy to count how many steps you take to the bathroom and tap toilet paper?”
She gasped in outrage. “Do you think it’s healthy to keep a huge secret from your sisters, Isabelle? We know what happened to you, but you shut us out and you hide behind your camera like it’s…like it’s an eighteenth-century shield!” (I’ve mentioned her love of the classics?)
“You hide behind your front door, Embroidery Queen!”
She got me with an elbow to my neck for that one.
You might think we would be embarrassed by our behavior: Two grown women rolling around fighting on a deck.
Here’s the truth: We are long past being embarrassed.
We kicked away from each other—kick, kick, kick—then Janie dove on top of me and we were face-to-face. She yelled, “Sometimes I think I hate you, Isabelle!”
“Sometimes I think I hate you, too, Janie!”
We both grunted.
“Well, I know I hate you both,” another voice cut through, sharp and low. “What’s that got to do with anything? Now get the hell up, your neighbors are all spying out their windows wondering why two grown women are wrestling on a damn deck.”
With that, our sister, Cecilia, who has swinging long blond hair, the voice of a logger, and weighs 280 pounds, at least, stepped over us.
Before she entered the houseboat, she smiled at Janie. As soon as she crossed the threshold she turned and scowled at both of us as if we were slimy algae. “Get the hell in here. We got big problems. We gotta get this figured out friggin’ quick. And don’t you two think you can say no. Your answer is yes, let’s start with that, damn it. Yes. ”
She slammed the door.
“We’re together on this, right?” I panted. Janie was still laying on top of me, rain streaking down our faces. “We’re not going.”
“Absolutely, positively not. No way.”
“Our answer is no.”
“No, no, no.” Janie shook her head. “No.”
We hugged on it.
Within an hour I was contemplating a quick escape by cannon-balling into the river. Janie was curled up, rocking back and forth, chanting, “I am worthy of praise, not abuse. I am worthy of praise, not abuse.”
Cecilia shoved a chocolate doughnut into her mouth. “Momma wants you home to help.”
Janie wrung her hands, four wrings on one side, four on the other. “My therapist said going home was an antispiritual, regressive idea for me. It could set me back years on my personal development and social-psycho-ecstasy scale.”
“Years from what?” Cecilia demanded. “You sit alone in this pink and white houseboat, indulging all your weird habits and number counting and rituals and you write books about torture and murder. Honey.” She did not say the word honey nice and polite. “There’s nowhere for you to go but up.”
“I can’t go. I’m working.”
“You can kill people in Trillium River, Janie.”
Cecilia shook her head at Janie, then fixed me with those blue eyes. “You’re coming, Isabelle.”
I snorted. Leave my loft with the view of the river? Live somewhere else when I’m still fighting all the blackness lurking around the edges of my life? Live with her again? “I don’t think so. Nope. Can’t come. Won’t come.”
“You can keep the lingerie companies in business in Trillium River.” Tiny doughnut pieces flew from her mouth in her fury. “I need you there.”
“I’m working,” I lied.
“Give me a break, Isabelle. You’re not working. You’re too screwed up. You two mice are leaving the city and coming to the country. Hey, maybe you’ll learn there’s more to life than yourselves.”
“That is unfair,” Janie sputtered.
“That’s so like you, isn’t it?” I stood up and faced her. “You attack when you don’t get your way. You use fury to control anyone who pisses you off. You get mean and nasty and believe that your victim deserved your attack and you sit back and hate them, never considering for one second that you might be wrong, never considering that, gee, you might do things that tick people off—”
“ I attack?” Cecilia