Inside Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

look in her direction as she sat down.
    Gah! Dangerous territory right away. He was totally throwing her under the bus to get around the pie conversation. Sneaky.
    “Good. Busy, but that’s all right. I talked to Uncle Michael day before yesterday. He and Mick were on their way to some remote village. Sounded great. Mick got on for a few minutes. He’s met a new woman. She’s English, which he knows is risky and all.” She grinned at her mother, who tsked and rolled her eyes.
    “Why does that boy torment himself with Englishwomen?”
    Mick had been married for three years. Rebecca had been an aid worker too, but she’d wanted to get out. To move to London or Seattle and start a family. Mick wasn’t ready, and things had fallen apart. Mick took responsibility for it, and Rebecca had been a lovely woman. But they got divorced anyway, and Rebecca was now someone else’s wife with a toddler and a thriving medical practice in Virginia.
    Four years later, Mick was still single, but this new woman had possibilities. Even better, in Mick’s letters over the last eighteen months, she’d found a man who was maturing at long last, a man who seemed ready to start thinking about a family.
    “She seems nice, Mom. She’s an American; I was just teasing. Her father is English, but her mother is American, and she grew up here in the States.” Ella paused to butter the warm roll and sigh happily after the first bite. “So good. Anyway, Mick sounded happier than I’ve heard him sound in a long time.”
    “I’ll have to take your word for it. He calls you far more than he calls us.” Her mother sniffed her annoyance. Mick did call her more often because he’d ended up on Ella’s side of this divide she had with their parents. He’d understood why it was important to her to do things for herself. Ella figured he called her more often to fill in the gap, make sure she felt connected and loved, even when he was out of the country.
    But Mick wasn’t her mother, and he wasn’t just a few miles away where she could see him all the time and hang out. She’d missed that ease and closeness she’d grown up with. The loneliness of it had been difficult to bear, and it wasn’t until the last four or five months that she’d begun to deepen her friendships with what she’d always thought of as Erin’s crowd. Now they were her crowd too.
    “They’re in and out of service for satellite coverage. They don’t always have phones in the villages when the team arrives. He calls when he’s not out in the field. He knows I’ll tell you guys all about what’s going on.”
    Her mother’s mouth flattened a moment. “Neither one of you calls enough. Except he’s changing the world and you’re making coffee. You’re wasting your potential and working yourself to the bone trying to do everything when you could just let us help you.” Her mother buttered her bread with choppy little swipes. The tension began to build in the room. Slowly stealing the oxygen until the fight-or-flight reflex threatened to kick in.
    “I don’t want to have this argument again.” And she didn’t. She wouldn’t argue and wouldn’t defend her position anymore because they’d said it all, and it was time to move on. She didn’t want to be angry over it anymore.
    Her father put his glass down and began to eat. “You had a job interview sometime this week, didn’t you?”
    He remembered, and that made her smile again.
    “It went really well. I know them all since I’ve worked there for the last nine months. I’m already in training for the job, which really gives me a leg up. I’m good with the clients, and I really want this. That has to mean something. I’m not just doing this job until something better comes along. I want it.”
    She studied her father. He’d lost weight since his last back surgery, but his color was better than it had been just a few months before. He’d never be the vibrant man he was before the accident, but he walked