Somewhere In-Between Read Online Free PDF Page B

as soon as his divorce was final. Gram must have seen right through the ‘just dating’ thing because she came right back with the accusation that she couldn’t believe that a daughter of hers would have an affair with a married man.
    Mom protested, did for a very long time, that things were not that way. “They’re not really together, not living as husband and wife, anymore. They’re just sharing the condo until it’s sold. They don’t sleep together,” she insisted. Gram latched right on to that little fact, asking how she could possibly know that for certain. “Because I believe him,” Mom told her. “I trust him.” She should have stopped there, but I have witnessed their arguments and they both seem to think they have to get in the last word. “At least they don’t have any children,” she told her mother. “He’s just trying to do this whole thing in a civilized manner.” Wow! I can just see Gram’s right eyebrow arching up into that devilish
V
of hers at that one.
    â€œIf a man will cheat on his wife,” she had prophesied, “he will cheat on his wife—no matter who she is.” Even looking at it all from where I am now, I still have a tough time with that one.
    Anyway, the wedding dress was Mom’s concession to her mother. So in her wedding photograph there she is, lost in the puffy sleeves and billowing
Gone With the Wind
skirts, forever captured as the little girl trying to appease her overbearing mother.
    All my childhood, Mom always swore that our relationship wasn’t going to be like hers and her mother’s. She believed we could avoid falling into the trap of mother, daughter, criticism and bickering. And mostly we did. But then there were those few nasty years. I didn’t hate her exactly, it just seemed at the time that everything she did bugged me; the way she was so proud of me, always wanting to be my friend; even being the kind of woman who put her family—Dad and me—first, seemed lame somehow. I know. Not cool.
    There were moments, I admit, when I was a perfectly horrible daughter and I gave her some pretty rough times back then. Now, I need her. I need her to do something for me. Something really big. I believe she would. I believe she would do anything for me—if only I could ask her.

5
    Moving day comes too soon. One by one, the three vehicles turn west onto the highway in the fused yellow light of sunrise. Ian, driving the new Ford pickup truck, which they’d traded Julie’s Taurus in on last week, leads the parade. Behind him is Barry in his Lincoln Continental, followed by the moving van. At the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee, bringing up the rear, Julie glances over at Jessie in the passenger seat with what she hopes is a smile. “Well, this is it,” she says and pulls onto the highway.
    She’s grateful to have her sister’s company, to have someone to talk with on the drive out to the ranch. Not so long ago she would have looked forward to driving alone; she used to enjoy her solitary time behind the wheel that allowed her head to clear out all the business clutter. Now the trouble with driving in silence, like any repetitive or thoughtless activity where she lets her guard down, is that it allows her mind to wander to places she would rather not go.
    â€œI wonder how much Mom is spoiling the girls,” Jessie says.
    Now there’s a reliable subject. Julie and her sister can waste hours talking about their mother and never exhaust the conversation.
    â€œStrange how she adores her granddaughters, isn’t it?” Jessie muses. “Given how you and I just seemed to be an inconvenience, a distraction from her life with Dad, while we were growing up. Making up for lost time, I suppose.”
    â€œYeah, I guess. Lucky her. A second chance,” Julie says, surprised by the harsh edge to her words. She thought she’d let go of all that. She