Susan Mallery - Sisters Like Us

He was right, of course. There was an easy, logical solution. Stop taking care of people and they would go away. Or at least be around less often. There was just one problem—when someone stopped by your home, you were supposed to take care of them.

“I can’t help it,” she admitted, wishing it weren’t the truth. “It’s a disease. I’m a people pleaser. I blame my mother.”

“I’d blame her, too, if I were you.”

She supposed she could take offense at Lucas’s words, but he was only stating the obvious.

In some ways Harper felt as if she was part of the wrong generation. According to celebrity magazines, fifty was the new twenty-five, which meant almost forty-two should be the new what? Eleven? Everyone else her age seemed so young and carefree, with modern attitudes and a far better grasp of what was in style and popular.

Harper was just now getting around to listening to the soundtrack from Hamilton and her idea of fashionable had a lot more to do with how she dressed her dining room table than herself. She was like a 1950s throwback, which might sound charming but in real life kind of sucked. On the bright side, it really was her mother’s fault.

“Speaking of your mother, where is she?” Lucas asked.

“At the senior center, preparing Easter baskets for the homeless.” Because that was what women were supposed to do. Take care of people—not have actual careers that could support them and their families.

“I, on the other hand, will be paying your bills, designing T-shirts for Misty, working on the layout of a sales brochure and making bunny butt cookies for my daughter.”

Lucas raised an eyebrow. “You do realize that bunny butt is just a polite way of saying rabbit ass.”

Harper laughed. “Yes, but they’re an Easter tradition. Becca loves them. Her father is dropping her off tomorrow afternoon and I want the cookies waiting.”

Because maybe if there were bunny butt cookies, her daughter would smile and talk to her the way she used to. In actual sentences that shared bits of her life.

“You sorry you didn’t go?” Lucas asked.

“To the memorial? Yes.” She thought for a second, then added, “No. I mean I would have liked to pay my respects and all, but Great-Aunt Cheryl is gone, so it’s not like she would miss me showing up.”

The drive from Mischief Bay to Grass Valley would take practically the whole day. Harper couldn’t imagine anything more horrible than being trapped in a car with her ex, his girlfriend and her daughter. Okay, the Becca part would be great, but the other two?

The worst of it was that while Great-Aunt Cheryl was actually Terence’s relative, Harper had been the one who had stayed in touch, right up until her death two months ago.

“Terence is forty-four. What is he thinking, dating a twenty-eight-year-old?” She glared at Lucas. “Never mind. You’re the wrong person to be having this particular conversation with.”

Because while her client was a handsome, single, fifty-year-old man, he also dated women in their twenties. In his case, their early twenties.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Is it all men or just you and my ex? Oh, dear God, the one thing you have in common with Terence is me. Did I do something to make you all date twentysomethings?”

“Calm down,” Lucas said mildly. “I was dating younger women long before we met. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Where have I heard that before?” She glanced pointedly at the clock on her microwave. “Don’t you have crimes to solve?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”

He rose and carried his dishes to the sink. Lucas was about five-ten, nicely muscled with a belly way flatter than hers. He wore jeans, cowboy boots and a long-sleeved shirt. He was a detective with the LAPD, and from what she’d learned about him in the nine months she’d been working for him, he’d always been a cop.

He returned to the table and slipped on his shoulder holster, then grabbed his blazer. “How do you make bunny butt cookies?”

She laughed. “It’s easy. You take a round sugar cookie frosted in pink icing, add two small oval sugar cookies decorated with pink candy for feet, use a miniature marshmallow for the tail and viola—bunny butt cookies.”

“Save me a couple.”

“I promise.” She would put them in a little box that she would decorate for the holiday. Because she simply couldn’t hand someone cookies on a plain paper plate. If she tried, the heavens would open and release a plague of locusts at the very least.

Oh, to be able to buy packaged cookies from the grocery store. Or prepared spaghetti sauce. Or a frozen entrée. But that would never happen because it wasn’t what Harper was supposed to do.

She carried the rest of the dishes over to the sink, packed up the uneaten food, then retreated to her large craft room with its built-in shelves and giant tables and cupboards. After finding a nice bunny-butt-cookie-sized box, she studied her ribbon collection before selecting one that would coordinate. While her glue gun heated, she sorted through her fabric remnants to find one that was Easter appropriate and wondered what other women did with the time they saved by not making every stupid thing by hand.

But Harper was her mother’s daughter and had never been very good at bucking tradition. Her sister, Stacey, was the rebel while Harper did what she was told. It wasn’t that she didn’t like making bunny butt cookies or decoupaging gift boxes, it was that she wanted just a little more in her life. More challenges, more money, more communication with her daughter. And while it was fun to blame all her problems on her mother, Harper couldn’t help thinking that in reality, everything she wanted but didn’t have was very likely her own damn fault.

* * *

The smell of waffles and turkey sausage filled the kitchen and drifted down the hall toward the master bedroom. Stacey Bloom slipped on her sleeveless dress, then glanced at herself in the mirror. With the loose style and knit fabric, not to mention her body shape, she looked as she always had. No one would guess, which was the point. She didn’t want the questions that would inevitably be asked—mostly because she didn’t want to be judged for her answers.

She knew that was her problem, no one else’s. The judging thing. If it were any other topic, she would be able to provide a brief but accurate response, one that would explain her position while making it clear that while the questioner might think his opinion was important, she did not. Except for this time.

She stepped into her lace-up hiking boots and tied them, then pulled a blazer from the row of them in her closet. She had learned years ago that having a kind of work uniform kept her mornings simple. She bought her black sleeveless dresses online, three or four of them at a time. Her blazers were of excellent quality and lasted for years. She changed them out seasonally—lighter fabric in summer, heavier in winter—although the temperate climate in Mischief Bay, California, meant her decision to switch one for another was based purely on convention and not necessity.

As for the hiking boots, they were comfortable and offered a lot of support. She spent much of her day standing in a lab or walking between labs, so they made practical sense. Her mother kept trying to get her to wear pumps and stockings, neither of which was ever going to happen. The shoes would cause foot pain and pressure on her lower back—these days more so than ever. Besides, something about her hiking boots seemed to intimidate the men she had to work with, and although that had never been her purpose, she wasn’t going to deny she liked the unexpected benefit.

She walked into her kitchen and hung her blazer on the back of her chair. Her husband, Kit, stood at the stove, humming to himself as he turned the sausage. The table was set and there was a bowl of sliced fruit by her place mat. A thermal to-go cup stood next to her backpack. She wanted it to be filled with delicious hot coffee, but knew instead it contained a vegetable-infused protein shake. Without looking she knew that her lunch was already packed in her backpack.