Chapter One   The hardest thing about starting a new journal is always that blank first page.  I suppose that part of the difficulty is that it is simply daunting to know that whatever you write on that page is going to set the tone for all that will be written after, and you already know, just because you’ve opened that first page, that you’re going to write about it. A woman can get a lot of writing done on vacation, which is why I brought my journal with me.  After all I’ve been through, I need to do a little decompressing, and I don't do mine the way Ava does hers.  And even as I write these words, just happening to look up, I can’t help but see her.  There she goes, strutting her stuff across the pool deck with some mother's hot little twenty-something son sniffing along behind her.  Poor little fella, he thinks that he’s the one stalking game, but she’s got years of experience on her side. This place, the Sandpiper Inn, is parked on a gorgeous beach in Barbados.  Intimate and exclusive, it’s a perfect hunting ground for her.  My friend Ava is what people like to call a Cougar, nowadays, but frankly, if I was a cougar, I would be offended by the comparison.  Cougars hunt for food and survival.  Ava hunts because she can.  Just as aggression and passion are two different things, her predatory nature is aggressive in ways that have nothing to do with survival, and everything to do with hedonistic vanity.  Ava likes sex and Ava likes men.  Oh, she likes her husband, too, but he doesn't always have what it takes to scratch where she itches. See, the thing is, people assume that women like Ava, lusty and lively in their sixties, are just looking to rub up on some young flesh and relive their glory days.  The thing is, like me, Ava's had plenty of glory during her days and she's not really looking for any more.  What she's wanting, and I know because she told me so, is that she just wants to flex her muscles and give as good as she gets. And rest assured, if you let Ava tell it, she gets plenty.  Which is why I believe that she knows exactly what she's talking about when she says things like, lie down with dogs and you’ll get up with fleas.  Now, Ava and I have our differences, and I’m not like Ava in a whole lot of ways, but I should have listened to her when she used those very words about my sister, but I didn't, and that set me up for another one of her old sayings, Hard head, soft behind...  It was the whole situation with my sister that left me shaking my head and glad to take Ava up on this Girl's Getaway. My sister and I had our differences, too.  I really should have listened when Ava warned me that if you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas... Old saying and everybody’s heard it, right?  Well, it might be an aphorism, one of those well-worn clichés better known as an Old Wives tale, but take it from me, some of those Old Wives really did know what they were talking about.  And if I’d known before I got to this point, what I know now, I probably would have paid a lot more attention. But if IF was a fifth, we’d all be drunk…  As it was, I might have been ready for a drink, but I wasn’t drunk.  Six weeks ago, when all of this started, I was sitting on a hard wooden chair, beside a detective’s desk in the middle of the Atlanta Police Department’s Zone Four office, trying not to touch anything I didn’t have to.  Just thinking about it now, I can’t help but give those Old Wives credit for knowing what they were talking about. And to think, I wouldn’t have been there if not for Hetty’s mother’s grandmother’s cake recipe. I crossed my legs and noticed Detective Grant’s eyes follow my movement when I smoothed a hand over my knee, and I had to correct myself.  I wasn’t here solely because of the recipe or the cake, and it wasn’t entirely Hetty’s fault, either.  I definitely played my role in this mess, after all, I was the one who invited Serena Fields to my home on Cascade, and I was the one who planned to murder her. Yes, I had a plan to put Serena out of my misery, and nobody should be surprised that I use the word murder – it’s so much more civilized than kill.  But face it; the blackmailing bitch had to go.  That was all I knew and all I intended, and for right now I was grateful that the broad-faced detective with the sweet smile was too preoccupied with my legs to ask me about those intentions. Suddenly realizing that I was acutely aware of where his eyes lingered, Detective Grant cleared his throat and shifted his errant gaze.  His thick brown fingers shuffled the computer printouts on his desk and pushing one to the top of the pile, he focused diligently.  “I only have a few more questions,” he finally said. “Fine.”  My reply was smooth and my voice was even. “Wh-what?”  Hetty’s voice wavered, mostly because she couldn’t stop sniffing and swiping at the tears rolling down her face.  There was nothing I was willing to say out loud at that moment, but damn, Hetty.  What was done was done and it was time to move on with the business of the living. Clearly uncomfortable with Hetty’s weepy grief, Detective Grant turned to me.  He was one of those men who didn’t like the combination of women and tears – I could see it etched in the lines of his tired face.  “Your home,” he said, carefully offering me his sweet smile and obviously hoping that I wouldn’t join Hetty in her tear-fest.  “Your home was the last place Ms. Fields was seen alive.”  “Yes,” I nodded, pulling myself tall in the hard wooden chair.  “She left just as my friend Ava Duncan arrived with her Pilates instructor.”  I smiled in that dainty, near-condescending manner that everyone expects from a woman of a certain age, especially when she has my kind of money.  “She’s trying to convert me.” “Pilates, huh?”  The sweet smile tilted and grew toothy as it widened.  Detective Grant was having dirty thoughts about me and Pilates.  Then he caught himself and cleared his throat again.  “And when Ms. Fields left, she took the cake with her?” “Yes.”  Beside me, Hetty’s sob rose to a chest-heaving wail and I was saved from saying anything more. “I didn’t know,” Hetty wept.  “I’ve been baking that cake most of my life and nobody ever died from it.  How could I know she was gon’ die?” “You couldn’t, dear.”  I covered Hetty’s hand with mine and nodded sympathetically when she wailed again.  “She never spoke of her allergy.” “Severe as it was, she never spoke of it, and she didn’t even wear a medic-alert identifier.”  The detective’s brow furrowed in Hetty’s direction, then smoothed when he angled his face and body back to me.  “According to the coroner’s report, that supports everything we know.”  He tapped the printouts together and slid them into a folder that he dropped to the center of his desk.  “Ms. Whitlow?” Squeezing her lips together, Hetty lifted her face and sniffed hard.  “Sir?” “Ms. Whitlow, that means that you’re in the clear.  You did not commit murder.” “But, but… she died, and I…” “Death by misadventure is not the same as intentional murder, you understand?”  “Okay…”  Hetty sniffed hard and blotted her eyes. The detective looked quickly to me.  “Ms. Cramer, it looks like there is no reason to question either of you any further.”  Good Lord, I breathed, only half-believing my good fortune.  How lucky could one woman get?  Not that I was heartless, but when the woman who helped me recover hundreds of millions of dollars, then threatened me with blackmail, turned out to have a sweet tooth and an allergy to nuts…  Well, I wasn’t above thanking the Universe for the “Hail Mary” shot that saved my ass.  After all, what’s a little anaphylactic shock between conspirators? But I did have a question.  “Ms. Fields, uh, she had no family that I know of,” I said softly.  “I’m wondering about, uhm…”  The delicacy of the question made it difficult to pose. “The disposal of the body?”  Question.  Just a little mini-flash of expression began in Detective Grant’s brown eyes before crossing his face. “She was an associate…” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I selected the appropriate word.  Uh-huh, well, it made sense that any right-thinking person probably would have thought I was going to say friend, and apparently the detective thought I would use the term, too.  When I didn’t, he leaned toward me, just a little, and his eyes searched my face.  To quiet his suspicions, I made my face calm, forced a smile.  “Serena Fields was an acquaintance of mine,” I told him. “And you always invite your associates to your home for cake…” “Really, detective?”  Something in my heart told me that I had to address the little question lingering behind his eyes, or maybe it was simply that life had taught me not to leave little things undone, so I backpedaled and said, “Actually, Serena was more than an acquaintance.  Had I known her longer I might have even called her a friend, and no one should be abandoned in death, especially not someone who might have been a friend.” Instinct backed down; I saw it in his eyes, and I knew that he was buying my story. In reality, though, every word I said was true.  What else would I call a woman who helped me plant a will worth all of my deceased husband’s assets?  And even though I had more than my fair share of faulty fair-weather friends, I really was tempted to call Serena a friend, right up until she slithered through my life with blackmail dripping from her tongue. Oh, the second she tried to play me, I wanted to kill her, I really did.  But who knew that she would fall victim to Greed, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and worse for her, that her greed would beat me to it?  Serena came to my house, driven by greed and her determination to walk away with as much of my money as she possibly could.  But fate had more in store for her.  Cake.  She wanted that cake the second she stepped through my door and inhaled the aroma wafting through the house.  Allergic to nuts, hungry for caramel cake, and too stupid to ask the ingredients – a bad combination, especially because the cake was made with pure almond extract and had almond butter in the frosting. Yes, poor Hetty’s family recipe did Serena in – saving me the trouble of killing her, and the truth is, I’m glad Serena took that big hunk of cake home with her.  I mean, think about it:  It wasn’t my recipe and I didn’t bake the cake.  In the end, I may have sliced the murder weapon, but I never fed it to her. Looking over at my cook, the still volubly weeping Hetty, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.  She would never have known how lethal her cake was, if not for her morning habit of reading the obituary section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution while sitting at my kitchen table. Without trying very hard, I could still picture Hetty sitting there, reading.  When she turned the newspaper page and saw Serena’s name and picture, she looked up at me and pointed to the page.  “This is you friend, isn’t it?  The one who was here the other day, and she asked for a slice of cake.  Right?” I finished pouring my own cup of coffee and took a step or two closer to Hetty, close enough to look over her shoulder, and there she was, Serena Fields, smiling up at us from the page.  The photo was a pretty one, but now she was dead.  So what was I supposed to say?  Without thinking that this picture was listed as part of an obituary, I said, “Yes, that’s her.”  “Oh, my sweet Lord,” Hetty sympathized, shaking her head.  “You just ever know when your time is coming, do you?” “No,” I supposed.  “How did she die?” “It says here that she was found dead in her home,” Hetty read, tracing the line of print with the tip of her finger.  “It says she died of an allergic reaction.  She was allergic to… nuts…  Oh, Lord, the cake had nuts in it – almonds!  I killed her!” Hetty had screamed like she was being chased by a demon.  She jumped up, overturning her chair and her coffee cup, and ran straight to the phone to confess her home-baked sin.  Which was how she wound up sitting next to me on a chair as hard as mine, wearing her tight blue suit.  She was so overwhelmed by her grief that everything about her, from her round brown face and full bosom, to her thick ankles and wide feet, looked swollen with remorse.  Poor Hetty, I was going to have to do something nice for her, but as bad as I felt for her, I felt pretty good for me.  And sitting between her and the detective, I only had one nagging thought... What did Serena mean?  Knowing that I would have throttled my blackmailing one-time friend with my bare hands before I gave her a dime, I had shoved the container of cake at Serena and ordered her out of my home – good hostess, be damned.  She tried to stand her ground, but we both knew that would never work, not up in my house. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?  You think you have the upper hand, but I’ve got news for you,” she’d hissed.  Her eyes narrowed, changing her face and making me think of another woman, the one she so greatly resembled.  Even angry and wearing jeans with a casual shirt, she was still the almost identical twin to my deceased husband’s not so long dead mistress, but I tried not to notice.  “You’ve got to go,” I told her.  “You’re not welcome here.” “This isn’t over.”  Shoving the cake into her shoulder bag, she’d pointed a shaking finger at me like she was casting some kind of curse.  “Your past isn’t pretty and it’s not dead, either – I made sure of that.  I am going to make you regret crossing me, if it’s the last thing I do.”   She slammed out of my house, and that was the last time I saw her alive, but her final words still echoed in my head and I couldn’t help wondering...  What did she mean? Two days later, our little trip to the police station was all but forgotten, even though I was still haunted by Hetty’s puffy still red eyes and the echo of Serena’s vague threat.  But I had a major event to plan, so I kept it moving.  Or at least I might have been able to keep it moving if my phones stopped their incessant ringing.  There were endless calls from event planners, museum officials, lighting stagers, my assistant, my personal shopper, and my publicist. Yes, honey, my publicist. If I had been anyone else born under the lucky star that changed me from plain old Eloise Jenkins from the dark side of Chicago, to the glittering and fabulous Loi Cramer of Atlanta, I might have been able to take the idea of my publicist in stride.  But as it was, every time I thought of my life path and how important my publicist was to my progress, damn, I just had to smile. But at this time, on this day, I was not smiling.  My publicist, Andrea Preston was riding on my last good nerve – and she was wearing it thin. “Loi,” she whined into the phone, “this exhibit opening is going to be a red carpet event, so the photo op will be an imperative.  I mean, the world is going to see the full Lucere collection for the first time.  I’ve already arranged for the press release and a January opening means …” I could hear the end of her pen tapping against her desk on the other end of the line.  I heard the emphasis she placed on the word world, and I knew it was a big deal.  Without much effort, I could imagine her thin lips trying to frame the words she would need to get me to do what she wanted, and it was suddenly too much for me.  Then a beep came across the line.  Another call.  It was endless.  “Do whatever needs to be done, Andrea.  Thanks.”  I hung up on her and relished the second or two of peace, then the phone rang again and I grabbed it. “Hello?’  Darn my reflexes! “Eloise?  Is this you?” Eloise?  Nobody had called me Eloise for more than forty years, not since the day I walked into Alex Cramer's life.  Alex, the man I would later marry said I looked nothing like an Eloise and then in a voice that sounded like midnight sex and music, told me that he would call me Loi -- and I had been Loi, ever since.  Or at least I was Loi to everybody except whoever this was on the other end of my phone.  “Excuse me?” “This is you, right?”  The woman’s persistent voice had an odd ring of familiarity to it, but I didn’t know who she reminded me of.  “I’m calling Eloise Jenkins ... uhm, Cramer.”  The woman heaved a put-upon sigh.  “This you, or not, Wesie?” Oh, Hell, no!  Who would call me 'Wesie?'  Nobody in Atlanta had ever... "This is Ronnie…” “Ronnie, who?”  Okay, now I was scared.  Who was rummaging around in my past, calling up a nickname I hadn’t heard in forever; and worse, who knew about the sister I’d left behind so many years ago? “This is your sister, Ronnielia.  Ronnielia Mae Jenkins.  From Chicago.” My sister?  Numb, all I could do was repeat after her.  "Chicago." “Yeah, Chicago.  It’s been a long time since the last time we talked.  I guess you’re surprised to hear from me, huh?” “Surprised.”  So surprised that I was rendered echolalic. “Well, it’s good to hear your voice after so long.” “So long…”  I was still stuck on stupid.  The last time I had seen or heard from my sister, I was what… eighteen? But the passage of time didn’t slow my sister down.  “Since I’m here, I guess I’m going to stay with you, right?  We can get caught up.” “Caught up with what?”  Finally locking in on her words snapped me out of my stupor.  “Here, where?” That heavy put upon sigh crossed the phone line again.  “I’m down here at the Greyhound station.  My bus just got in from Chicago, so you’re the first call I made, and I can’t wait to see you.” “I …” “You don’t have to go to no big trouble for me,” she gushed.  “I just can’t wait to see my little sister all grown up – they tell me you’re doing well, and I just can’t wait to see for myself.” “They, who?”  This woman who claimed to be my long lost sister was giving me a headache. “Give me your address and I’m gonna catch a cab.” She was talking so fast that I was having trouble putting things in context and it didn’t help that a hot flash sent a surge of heat arrowing through me, making me fan and wipe my brow.  Then, I did something stupid.  I gave her my address and twenty minute later, I found out exactly what Serena Fields meant when she told me that she wasn’t finished with me.   Back to The Fitwryter     Chapter Two   One good thing about my friend Ava, she has a knack, or more like a gift for finding hotels and intimate little guest villas that offer great service and handsome service providers.  The dark-tanned muscular young man with the movie star eyes and toothpaste commercial smile, standing at her side, was no exception.  Holding his tray flat against his palm, he leaned over Ava's reclining body offering something tall and cool in an umbrella accented glass.  She smiled, took the glass, and held it between her palms.  From where I was sitting I could see the glass and the young man both sweating under her attention.  Time to mind my own business.  Keeping my eyes on my journal, I pretended to ignore her when she hissed, “Hater.” My eyes were still on the page.  From the corner of my mouth, I whispered back, “Cradle robber.” “There was no milk behind his ears,” she sniffed.  “If he can walk and talk, he’s on his own.” “You're going to Hell for that, Ava.”  She probably would have had something else to say in her own defense, but a nice young girl in a cute little sundress uniform arrived with my bottled water.  She set the icy glass on the table next to me, then poured cold water for me.  When I smiled up at her, there was none of the lascivious tension between us that had been so evident in Ava's interaction with her young waiter.  Mostly because I like men – grown men. As the young woman left us, I lifted the glass to my lips, refusing to notice Ava arranging herself as provocatively as she thought she could get away with at the side of a public pool, I thought about... Holding a tall ice-filled glass and standing at the foyer window back in Atlanta, watching through the lead-glass pane when the white taxi rolled up my drive to stop at my front door.  Stopped, more than parked, the car just sat there, engine rumbling, and nothing happened for a minute or two, but when the back door flew open, it was like all hell broke loose. The thick woman in the under-sized jeans scrambled out of the back seat and waved her finger around in the air like a sword.  Still swinging her finger, she reached back to pull a piece of black luggage out of the cab and let it fall to the ground next to her flat green shoes.  Her short red-dyed hair stood on end and her large earrings swung widely when she raised her voice and shook her head.  I couldn’t make out a single word she was saying, but the volume and tone were shrill enough to shatter glass. Whatever she said triggered the driver to throw his own door open and leap out of the cab, defensive and determined.  So now, there they were in front of my house, facing off like two loud gladiators.  Their primary weapon of choice seemed to be words, but I didn’t have a clue as to what language they were fighting in – all I knew was that it didn’t sound like my native language. “Oh, my goodness,” Elaine, my housekeeper, whispered at my side.  Sucking her teeth in disgust, she shook her head, but her eyes were riveted to the mess in front of my house.  Without looking at me, she folded her arms and shook her head, judging.  “They must be lost,” she finally said.  “There’s no other reason for people like that to be this far off the main road and carrying on like that.” Truer words were probably never spoken, but as astounded as I was by the fracas, the more I looked at the loud angry woman, the more I recognized her for who she was:  Ronnielia Mae Jenkins, my older sister. “I’m calling the police,” Elaine vowed, never moving. “No… don’t.”  Mortified, I told myself that this was just a one-time incident, but even as I tried to convince myself, I knew that I was wrong – this happened all the time in Ronnie World.  Hell, Ronnie was my sister and I knew her for who she was, and I also knew that what I was watching was pretty much par for the course, for her.  Through the window, I watched Ronnie stand with her feet planted and her legs wide beside the taxi’s open door.  With her chin raised and her finger jabbing the air like a sword, and her mouth running a mile a minute, this woman was going to win the fight or die trying. The cab driver, slender and wiry, didn’t seem to want to give an inch, and she wasn’t having it.  Ronnielia Mae Jenkins was a woman used to fighting, and I couldn’t look away from the verbal beat-down she was determined to deliver.  I swear, standing there in the foyer of my stately home, seeing the goings-on in my graceful sun-dappled motor court, it was like watching a horrible accident that I couldn’t look away from, no matter how hard I tried.  She waved her arm and her blouse pulled free of her pants, exposing a slice of brown skin, and without missing a beat, she reached back to snatch it down.  Seeing her movement, the cab driver hesitated and she moved toward him, taking advantage of the crack in his resolve.  Clearly, my sister was a woman used to taking people to the mat and beating them into submission to get what she wanted.  Watching her, a chill ran through me because I had a feeling that I knew what she wanted, and it had nothing to do with a cab ride.  She wanted what I wanted when I ran away from Chicago all those years ago.  She wanted to survive. Oh, Lord...  Now she wanted something from me -- something that would help her survive, and though I didn't know what she had done over the last forty or so years to assure that survival, I knew what she'd een willing to do and who she'd been willing to do it with when we were growing up.  I knew that the three years that separated us had given her time to see and do things that I didn't even want to imagine.  The knowledge made my hand shake so badly that I had to pass the glass I still held, now filled with cool water and chips of melting ice, to Elaine. “Don’t make no sense in the world, and her dressed up like its Halloween…” Elaine muttered, taking the glass and staring out at my sister and the cab driver. “I’ll handle it, Elaine.” “Uh-huh…”  Reluctant, but having no other reason to stand beside me at the window, Elaine went back to work.  And I unlocked the front door. I heard them before the door was fully open, but still had no idea what language they were yelling in – so I tried English. “Excuse me.”  Intent and totally committed to their battle, neither of them looked at me, so I waved a hand for attention and called louder, “Excuse me.” “What?”  Ronnie jammed her hands on her hips and turned on me like I’d touched her. “Twenny-sebbin-fiddy,” the man yelled, swinging his face in my direction. Tempted to shove the door shut and hide in my house, I tried again.  “May I help you?” “Wesie!”  My sister dropped her hands and turned her attention from the driver as she rushed toward me.  “Twenny-sebbin-fiddy!” the man screamed, coming around the front of his taxi.  “She owe me!” “My sister!”  Ronnie kept moving, even when I dodged her embrace.  “Oh, thank the Lord, you’re here!”  “You gonna pay me?” the driver demanded, following his quarry up my front stairs. “Wait.”  I stiff-armed his advance and took a deep breath.  “She,” I looked at Ronnie, already knowing the answer, “She owes you for the taxi fare?” “Yes!”  The driver’s nearly bald head bobbed at me.  “Twenny-sebbin-fiddy!” “He wants to over-charge me and I’m not paying it.  Don’t know who he tryin’ to play; I ain’t no dumb trick,” my suddenly docile sibling muttered, looking over my shoulder and into my home.  “He only brought me from the bus station.  It’s not that far.” “Twenny-sebbin-fiddy,” the driver declared, pounding his palm with his other fisted hand.  “She owe me and tryin’ not to pay.  She know she owe me.  I’ll call the police and put her in jail where she belongs.” “What!  You’re the thief, talkin’ about twenty-seven fifty for a two minute ride.”  Head pushed forward and looking ready to box, Ronnie flipped into anger again and lunged at the man.  “Ain’t nobody going to jail, but you can get a ride to the hospital…” I was faster than she was, or maybe she just let me be fast enough to catch her arm and pull her back from the driver, and okay…  Yeah.  If nothing else told me who this woman was, her actions assured me that this was indeed my sister.  “Just give me a minute,” I told the man.  Still holding Ronnie’s arm, I took a step back into the foyer and pulled my household checkbook and a pen from the table beneath the mirror.  Back at the door, standing between them, I faced the still-irate driver.  “Would you mind taking a check?” “You don’t have cash?”  Suspicious. Okay, this was enough crazy to last me for a week.  “I can give you a larger tip if you’re willing to accept a check.” Still suspicious, the driver narrowed one eye and squinted at me.  “Better be good, ‘cause I’ll be back with the cops if its not.  House this big, it better be good.” “It’s good.”  With my sister looking over my shoulder, I scribbled in an amount, doubling his fare and adding another twenty dollars for the trouble my sister had caused. “That’s too much,” Ronnie said, close enough to my ear to make me jerk my head away.  When I shoved the check toward the driver, she took a step back, but not before I heard her mutter, “Wouldn’t be me.” No, of course it wouldn’t be you, Ronnie.  You probably didn’t have any intention of paying the man, not from the second you dropped your butt in his cab… Gingerly taking the check from my fingers, the driver looked up and his lips moved silently as he made an effort to memorize my address.  Once he had the house number committed to memory, his fingers folded the check and tucked it into his shirt pocket.  He mumbled thanks and ambled back to his car.  Giving my house number a final glance, he climbed behind the wheel and steered his car away from my home. “Why you tip him like that?  You know it’s wrong to reward laziness.  Tired ass, he ain’t even bring my suitcase into the house,” my sister grumbled, and I just looked at her.  She rolled her eyes before glancing at me again and when I didn’t move, she made up her mind.  “I guess I’ll just have to get it myself.” Damned right, she would! Ronnie took her time walking down the three steps and over to her small piece of luggage.  As she walked the short distance, I couldn’t help noticing how much she’d changed over the years.  Back in the day, she’d been pretty and curvy, with ‘good hair’ that curled around her shoulders, and a sassy smiling kind of daring about her.  With a quick wit, she always knew the right thing to say, and men liked to hear her say it, making her the kind of lush brown-skinned girl men liked to watch – and do other things with.  Watching her now, I could see that the years had probably been kinder to her than her lifestyle had been.  She was a little more than three years older than me.  That meant she had to be sixty four, almost sixty five, but her smooth brown skin looked soft and barely wrinkled.  Her brown eyes, still a lot like mine, didn’t seem able to stay still for very long.  I wasn’t quite sure of the story they hid, but there were tiny time bred lines to be seen at the corners of her eyes.  Lines framed the perfect cupid’s bow of her lips, too, and they might have benefitted from a touch of Botox, but the lines were fine enough that they could almost be overlooked.  Her hair was another story.  Just above her face, right at the hairline, I could see a thin line of white marking the need for an update on her flaming red dye job.  Hefting her bag, Ronnie grimaced at the broken wheel hanging uselessly from one corner, then looked up at me.  Her face was careful – hiding her thoughts and maybe her intentions, but the lines around her mouth tightened and I could tell that she was measuring me, and it was creepy. I tried not to notice her clothes.  Probably found on the sale rack at a discount store, they might have been fine on a much younger woman, but on a woman in her mid-sixties, they were a complete Fashion Don’t.  From where I stood, everything she had on looked too small and intended for a woman less than half her age.  Maybe she forgot that the surest way to look older is to dress too young…  If my sister had ever been given that fashion tip, she didn’t seem to care, and dressing too young wasn’t doing a thing for her body.  The waistband of her snug faded jeans bit into her flesh, leaving the soft mound of her belly barely covered, even though she kept pulling at her top.  Her top was an entirely different kind of wrong. Maybe it had been white or cream colored when she left Chicago, but a dark spill of coffee or cola had left a murky stain all across the cheap shiny polyester fabric.  To make matters worse, the low-cut top displayed a sloping expanse of bosom that should have been housed in a better bra.  Maybe she was going for comfort on a twenty-hour bus ride, I thought.  Then, I felt bad for her and a little angry at myself for judging.  Maybe this is all she has…  I was still stepping into minor league guilt when Ronnie brushed past me and into my home, leaving me to close the door behind her.  Passing me, she trailed a distinct odor of cheap stale cologne and something else that almost made me wrinkle my nose, before I caught myself.  Twenty hours on a bus, without a shower, could leave even the cleanest person a little musty, I told myself. When I looked at her in the subdued light of my foyer, I suddenly saw my sister as the world did, and realized that there but for the grace of God stood… me.  If it hadn’t been for my running away to Atlanta and lucking up on the Singer School for Certified Nursing Assistants, I might never have come to the front door of this house looking for work.  If it had not been for grace or fate, or crazy kismet, Alex Cramer might never have opened the door to this house, welcoming me into his employ and his bed.  Because of a whim of destiny, or maybe it was my karma, I married Alex and though it turned out that he was a man given to felicity when it came down to fidelity, my life was not my sister’s. Ronnie and I were different, and I tried to swallow the shame of our difference. It was that difference in who we were that made a lot of the difference in the lives we led – leaving me more than a little ashamed that I had not reached back for her before now.  As the wife and now the widow of Alex Cramer, I certainly had the money and the resources, but the little bit of family I had back in Chicago had never been a major life factor for me.  Now that Ronnie was here, in the flesh, I realized that my sister didn’t need a handout as much as she needed a hand up, and in all of my charity work, I had never bothered to reach out to her.  Looking at her that afternoon, I knew that was a damned shame, and my shame was so acute it left my skin itching and burning.  “So, where am I supposed to put this?”  Staring down at her broken luggage, Ronnie broke into my thoughts.  The bag was at her feet, and she gave it a little nudge with the scuffed toe of her flat green shoe. Okay, looking back on that one moment, there were some places, one in particular, where I could have told her to put that bag… but this was my sister, and she was down on her luck, and I hadn’t seen her in all those years.  But if I’d known then what I know now... So instead of following my first mind, caught as I was in the web of my thoughts, I just gave her a small smile and said, “Upstairs.”  “Upstairs.”  Ronnie turned and looked up at the long flight of stairs leading to the second floor bedrooms.  When she brought her face back to look at me, I saw a flicker of something that I couldn’t name, and she covered it before I could fully read the emotion.  I could have guessed what it was though, and if anyone had asked, I would have called it greed.  I’d seen it before.  Most recently, I’d seen it the afternoon Serena Fields showed up to try to extort money from me. Now, trust me when I say that I know how to handle greed and avarice, but that look on my sister’s face and the swell of shame oiling my intentions worked to my total disadvantage.  For just a moment, I was tempted to reach out and wrap my arms around Ronnie, hold her like she was my much loved and sorely missed sibling, and reassure her that everything was going to be all right.  Then her face changed and the cunning look slid away, leaving hardness behind.  My sister’s face turned to stone and just like that, for me, the tempting urge to consol her receded as quickly as it had arisen.  We had never been demonstrative toward each other, not even as children, so that little shift didn’t surprise me but I didn’t like it.  Seeing it, I wasn’t willing to chance her coldness or an outright rebuff, so I kept my hands and my latent urge to myself. My friend Ava says that I have a really bad habit of not following my first mind.  Ava is not really the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she is my oldest and dearest friend in all of Atlanta, and sometimes she’s actually right.  So when she kept bringing it up, I had to actually ask her what the saying meant, it being one of those oddly obscure kinds of things that I tend to ascribe to those Old Wives.  Of course, when she explained it, it made a lot of sense and I’ve since tried to be aware of my tendency to not listen to those little thoughts that presage the very things that I should have seen coming.   Ava liked to call those little premonitions her Bullshit Radar.  The day my sister turned up at my home, my Bullshit Radar was out of order, because her stony face should have told me something – but it didn’t.  I knew Ronnie for who she had been – a survivor.  What I didn’t know for sure was who she had grown into in all the years we were apart.  Standing at the foot of the stairs, all I knew right then was that the woman in front of me shared my blood and needed my help.  So I ignored the little prescient warning that shivered through me as I led her upstairs to a large garden-facing guest room, and waited for the other shoe to drop. Back to The Fitwryter     Chapter Three   Walking up the stairs to the guest bedroom with my sister at my side, I was aware of three things.  First, I could almost hear Ronnie’s thoughts, appraising me.  She was taking note of everything from my hair and nails, right down to the little workout outfit and shoes that I was wearing.  I felt her gaze inspect the whiteness of my teeth and the flash of the rings on my fingers.  Her eyes missed nothing as we walked past pieces of my treasured collection of Ellen Lucere furniture, and while she may not have been willing or able to understand the quality of the slave-crafted handiwork, I was fairly certain that she understood that it had value.  As we walked, I had no doubt that she was estimating my accumulated worth and what it would mean to her. Secondly, probably for the first time since I’d come back to stay at the house on Cascade, I realized how much stuff I owned and how the excess probably looked to my sister.  Seeing my home through my sister’s eyes, I remembered the tiny apartment we’d grown up in.  It was a dreary one-bedroom unit on the back of the building.  The best thing anyone could say about it was that it was clean, and that was mostly an accident of poverty – we never had much, so there was never much to get dirty or broken.   The third thing I was aware of was my nosy housekeeper, Elaine.  From the corner of my eye, I saw that she’d found a cloth of some kind and stood outside the small salon wiping a doorknob.  A doorknob.  Now, wouldn’t you think that if she was going to be bold enough to stand out there and snoop, she would have found something more reasonable to wipe?  Deciding that maybe I was giving her too much leeway, I ignored her and climbed the stairs to open the door to the room I’d chosen for Ronnie. “Girl…”  Ronnie’s head swiveled and her eyes widened in appreciation as she stepped through the door and took in the room.  “This is nice,” she told me.  Dropping her battered luggage beside the door, she let her worn pleather purse sag from her shoulder to land on top of it.  “Umph.”  She sucked her teeth and spared me a short glance before crossing the room to lift the edge of the sheer curtain at the window.  Looking out, her lips parted and she seemed to hold her breath. She stood there, staring out at the terrace and the garden beyond for so long and standing so still that I almost thought she’d forgotten about me.  For some reason that I still cannot define, I didn’t want to intrude on her thoughts.  Maybe it was because I still recalled the first time I had taken a moment to appreciate the slow stunning natural beauty of an autumn day in Georgia, and I didn’t want to take that from her. Quiet, I sat on the padded window seat next to her and waited for her to come back from wherever her thoughts had taken her. Finally, still looking out of the window, Ronnie sighed and licked her lips.  “Guess you’re wondering how I found you, after all this time, huh?” Okay, uh…  Yeah.  Not the smoothest conversational opening, but I was willing to take what I could get.  “It did cross my mind,” I told her.   Ronnie let the curtain drop and smiled down at me.  Yes, it was a real smile, and I have to admit that it warmed my heart to be on the receiving end of it.  Without waiting for any kind of bonding effect to occur, she let the smile fade and walked back across the room to her purse.  Holding the giant bag in one arm, she used her other hand to dig inside. “I got a letter a couple of weeks, ago,” she said, still digging.  “It was from a friend of yours.” Now who did I know who would send my sister a letter?  Actually, now that I thought of it, who knew that I had a sister?  I couldn’t think of a soul I had ever shared that tidbit with – not even Alex, and I was married to him.  I must have looked puzzled, because Ronnie kept talking while she searched.  “Yeah, your friend Sharonda, or something like that…  Aha!”  Triumphant, she pulled the wrinkled envelope free and let the big brown bag drop to the floor. “I don’t know anyone named Sharonda,” I was still saying as Ronnie smoothed the envelope against the swell of her hip, until it was flat enough to pull the letter out.  “Not Sharonda,” she announced.  Jabbing her finger at the signature on the page, she looked at me and nodded.  “There it is.  Serena.  Serena Fields.” My mouth went dry and my heart skipped two or three beats.  The air around me got thick and my stomach dropped.  Serena Fields was dead, and dead people don’t go around sending letters through the U.S. mail.  Or did they? “Uhm…  Are you sure that’s from Serena Fields?” “That’s the name on the letter.  What’s wrong with you, Wesie?  You’re acting nervous, all of a sudden.”  Still holding the creased letter, she walked across the room to stand closer to me.  “You do know this woman, right?” I nodded slowly.  “I did.” “Then, what’s wrong?  Why you actin’ all hainty, all of a sudden?” Hainty.  I can't tell you the last time I'd heard that word, probably sometime in childhood, but it was exactly the right word for the cold haunted weirdness that was creeping over me.  I swear, goose bumps rose all along my arms as I remembered Serena's threat:  I am going to make you regret crossing me, if it's the last thing I do.  Eating that cake was the last thing she did, but on the way, she wrote and mailed this letter.  And now my sister was here. “Wesie?”  Ronnie flapped the letter at me, stirring the air in front of my face.  Thankfully, the little breeze brought a touch of sanity with it. “Ronnie, what’s the date on that letter?” “Date?”  She moved her arm a bit away from her face and squinted at the letter.  “Uhm, the fifteenth, why?” It was my turn to look away, and I hoped that my streetwise sister would miss the flow of my thoughts.  That letter was dated the same day as the cake incident.  I knew it in my heart, long before it reached my brain – this letter and my sister’s arrival were a part of Serena’s revenge.  “We… we recently lost Serena,” I said softly.      “Lost her?  Really?”   Aghast, Ronnie’s hand dropped to her side as she goggled at me.  “You tryin’ to tell me that a dead woman sent me this letter?” Wondering how to get my hands on the letter, and what other hell was attached to it, I nodded and dropped my eyes to my lap. Serena was a sneaky heifer.  I knew that from Day One.  Devious as all get-out, from the moment she’d walked into my life, things had happened around her.  She’d been a key player in helping me to get Alex’s estate out of the hands of his mistress, Janisse Breckenridge, and though the scheme had been accomplished by sheer cunning, she had never been shy about wanting me to make things easier.  Killing Janisse had been Serena’s suggestion, and she hadn’t hesitated to demonstrate her frustration when I refused. Her frustration only deepened when I refused to let her blackmail me... so she sent for Ronnie.  It didn’t make sense for her to use my sister as leverage.  How was the sister I hadn’t seen for more than half my life going to be a useful tool for Serena?     Across the room, Ronnie splayed a hand across her ample bosom and sucked at her teeth.  “She must have been a good friend, because she didn’t want you to be alone.”  I looked up.  “Yeah, she sent me a money order for five hundred dollars, and your address.  So you wouldn’t be by yourself.” That bitch.  "Yes," I said out loud, "Serena was like that."  And there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it -- but what good would it do Serena to have Ronnie here? “Sorry to hear about your loss, but it couldn’t have come at a better time.”  Ronnie folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope.  When I looked up, the smile was still on her face.  “Timing couldn’t have been better for me, I mean.  Things were a little rough back home and I needed a change of scenery, so I figured why not take  page out of your book and I hopped on the first thing smokin’, and here I am.”  She spread her arms like a performer, “Ta-daa!  How ‘bout that?” “Yeah,” I agreed.  “How ironic is that?  We both left Chicago on Greyhound and wound up in Atlanta.” “Great minds think alike.”  Eyes still on me, Ronnie let herself drop down to the foot of her bed. No, I take that back.  She didn’t exactly drop, rather she kind of eased herself down, like a woman with a sore back and sore knees and some hard living on her.  She started to cross her legs, then had to use her hands to settle one leg over the other, and when she smoothed her hands over her jeans, she sighed from the effort. My sister was moving like a tired old woman, and I felt kind of bad about it.  So was this Serena’s plan?  Make me feel guilty for the rest of my life? Planting her hands on the mattress behind her, Ronnie leaned back to look at me.  “I can see why you settled down here, Wesie.  Life’s been good to you.  Nothing like what I’ve been going through.” “What have you been going through?  And where’s Henry?”  Hoping I didn’t sound mean did nothing to blunt the questions. Ronnie closed her eyes and pushed her lips together, then she drew long hard breath in through her nose.  “Henry’s long gone, honey.  But you knew he would be, didn’t you?  Can’t nobody live long on rocks and hard times – he died about a week after you left the City.” Died?  There wasn’t much to say about that, besides, she was right.  In all fairness, our drug addicted, no-luck, hard-life older brother had never really stood a chance, but that didn’t stop the pang of remorse that clutched at my heart. “You and me,” my sister said, “we’re all that’s left.” Ronnie was right again.  None of us had ever known our fathers, and our mother ended her life in a pauper’s grave, leaving us without much family to count on.  Now, as far as I knew, Ronnie and I were the sole survivors clinging to our little branch of the Jenkins family tree.  “And now you’re here.”  I tried to smile at her.  “So tell me about you…” “A lot of time’s gone by,” she said and the words were bitter, almost as though she was blaming me.  “Too many questions and too much life to account for – where do you want me to start?” Trying to appear relaxed, I sat deeper into the window seat and crossed my legs.  “How about where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing?” “Where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing,” she snorted.  “A lot you care, but I don’t blame you.”  Ronnie tossed her head and stared at the ceiling, resentment quickly covered.  “My life ain’t been nothing like yours…  You know what I was doing when you last saw me.” Yeah, flatbacking.  I remembered how my sister used to make her money. “Well, a woman can’t do that forever,” she said, reading my thoughts.  “Besides, I was lucky enough to get out of the life without catching some kind of disease or getting pregnant like a whole bunch of other girls out there – can you imagine me turning up on your doorstep with a pack of kids hanging off me?” Truth was, no, I couldn’t.  It was already hard enough getting past the image of her rolling up in my driveway and fighting with a cab driver, but she did have a valid point.  She had survived up until now, and survival was everything for her.  Having children to raise would have made her life that much more difficult.   Seeing the impact of time on Ronnie’s face and hearing the toughness in her voice, it was hard to imagine her mothering anyone – especially in light of the example we’d had. Our mother was no prize, and by the time I came along, it was pretty clear that the novelty of having kids with disappearing daddies had worn off for her.  She figured that her job was to give us names and put a roof over our heads, and she had done exactly that, with nothing to spare.  There were no Sunday dinners, no doing homework around the kitchen table, no family outings or church socials for Henry, Ronnie, or me.  We got fairly regular meals and counted ourselves lucky.  The only time we got tucked into bed was when we did it for ourselves – which of course we never did, because we didn’t know that it was a possibility. Remembering, I would have sighed over lost childhood, but my sister was still talking. “I never wanted kids, anyway.  All I ever wanted was to have a little security.”  She looked around the room, then ran a short-nailed hand across the comforter.  When she sighed, I had to look away from the picture she made.  “All I ever really wanted was to not have to worry about money – you know?” I could have told her that money wasn’t everything, and a part of me wanted to tell her that there had been a time when I would have loved to have been a mother, but I had been in love with and married to a man who wasn’t interested.  I wanted to tell her, but I knew she didn’t want to hear any of that.  Especially not from me. We sat in silence for a while, then Ronnie started to talk again.  “I had an old man for a while, after you left.  He got me off the streets for a while, but when things got bad, I had to do what I had to do.  He couldn’t take it, so I kept moving on, doing what I had to do.  And when I didn’t feel like doing that, men always seemed like the cure for lack-a-money-itis.” Not sure what that meant, I started to speak, but Ronnie pushed herself up from the bed with a grunt.  She walked over and opened the closet door, looked in, then shut it.  Walking over to another door, she opened it and looked in to inspect the bathroom, then turned and grinned back at me.  “You know this bedroom’s ‘bout the size of the whole apartment we grew up in, don’t you?  And there were four of us, and Mama’s Sometimes Man in there.” Mama’s Sometimes Man.  Now, that took me back – way back.  That was what we used to call the men that Mama used to bring home – the ones who would pay the rent and buy groceries for a while.  Sometimes they would stick around and do it for months and months.  Sometimes, they were only there long enough for Mama to realize that they were eyeing Ronnie or me, and then they would disappear. Ronnie shut the bathroom door and stretched, raising her arms high and yawning widely.  “This is nice, Wesie, nothing like Chicago.”  She dropped her arms and suddenly, her stomach rumbled, the slight noise dissonant between us.  “I’m getting hungry.  Is the maid gonna bring my dinner up here?” It rankled, just a little bit, that Ronnie just assumed that there were servants somewhere in my home, just hanging out and waiting for the opportunity to wait on her.  But I couldn’t say that, now could I?  So, instead, I smiled and said, “If you like.”  Figuring that I should at least be cordial and feed my sister, I couldn’t help embracing the nagging idea that there was something that Ronnie was not saying about this visit.  Maybe it was my Bullshit Radar going on alert, or maybe I had that feeling because of all the crafty women who had crossed my path lately.  A large part of me wanted to believe that my sister was here because Serena’s plan had gone awry and Ronnie really wanted to seriously embrace our maternal connection, but that same part of me suggested that if I fell for that, Ronnellia Mae Jenkins would not hesitate to play me like a good hand of Spades.  There went my Bullshit Radar… Ronnie didn’t say anything about how long she planned to stay.  She didn’t say anything about when or even if she ever planned to leave, but it was more than that.  There was just something about her that had me believing that every word she was not saying was more important than what she was saying. “I’ll have Hetty bring a tray up for you.” “Good, but I want a nap first.”  Ronnie yawned again, and stretched so hard that I heard her bones popping.  Finishing her stretch, she shook herself like a puppy and looked at me.  “We’ve been doing all of this catching up, but I forgot to ask you something.  Why did you change your name?” “Change my name?  I got married.”  Short logical answer, I thought. “No.  No, no, no.”  She wagged a finger at me and turned the word into a song.  “You were born Eloise, and always called Wesie.  Then you turn up in Atlanta and all of a sudden you’re called Loi.”  Ronnie half-closed one eye and looked shrewd.  “Who is Loi Cramer?” Turned out, I had to show her, because the telling just wasn’t enough.   Back to The Fitwryter