Trail of the Spellmans Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself, but not at the expense of our work. At first I thought of Mom’s extracurricular activities as a kind of dress rehearsal for retirement. But lately I’d begun to find holes in that theory; something else was at play. I noticed a stack of paperwork growing on my mother’s desk and caught a series of errors in surveillance reports that were typed in the early hours of the morning. I decided to put an end to her coffee break and searched the house for Mom and D.
    I found them both seated on lawn chairs in the back garden, lazing about like it was an aimless Sunday afternoon. If I haven’t mentioned a garden before, that’s because there wasn’t one. Another one of Mom’s very recent hobbies had been gardening. She’d planted some perennials and something that I swear looked like a marijuana plant. My mom, apparently reading my mind, said, “Isabel, don’t try to smoke that. It’s a Japanese maple leaf.” 3 I took a moment to note the status of the greenery; everything was still alive, but that’s not saying much—they were alive whenshe got them and it’d only been about a month. Forget about the garden. The absent employees reclined in their chairs with the exact same book in hand and, oddly enough, almost identical baffled expressions on their faces. Between them sat a plate of D’s secretly famous cranberry scones. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I snagged one and dug in.
    Typically, my mother crammed alone for her punitive book club meeting. I’d yet to get a proper answer for why she joined the club in the first place. The entire affair had the air of espionage about it. For most women, a book club is at worst a nuisance and at best a great way to get free food and wine (and literature, if you’re into that sort of thing). But I couldn’t figure what my mom was getting out of it. She rarely had anything interesting to say about the book or the other group members and was always cramming at the last minute in a comprehension-challenged state of stressed-out speed-reading. This month Mom had fallen particularly far behind, and since work was relatively slow, she solicited D’s assistance as a human CliffsNotes. However, the time crunch was so severe that Mom could only tackle the first half, while D read the second half blind, offering up the mere bullet points. He was also battling a series of questions that arose out of the narrative incongruity.
    “Who is Mark?” D asked.
    “Her spiritual adviser.”
    “Got it.”
    “What’s happening now?” my mother asked D.
    “Lynette has enrolled in five courses from the Learning Depot: pottery making, molecular gastronomy, tai chi, assertiveness training, and speed-reading.”
    “I should take that one,” my mom said.
    Demetrius continued: “She decides she wants to quit the assertiveness class but comes up with a lie about a family emergency as an excuse, not recognizing the inherent irony of that behavior. Who is this Loretta lady? She keeps talking about her and not in a friendly way.”
    “That was her best friend whom she found in bed with her golf instructor.”
    “Why aren’t they speaking anymore?” D asked.
    “Because she was also sleeping with the golf instructor.”
    “Okay, that explains a few things,” D replied.
    “Just be grateful you missed the ten-page invective on golf.”
    “I never played,” Demetrius said.
    “Miniature golf is better,” my mom said authoritatively. 4
    “I love miniature golf,” D replied. “At least I used to.”
    “We should have a company miniature golf day,” my mom said.
    An interruption was required at this point.
    “What’s the name of this book?” I said, taking another bite of D’s spectacular baked good.
    “This Road I Call My Heart, ” D replied, shaking his head in disbelief.
    I almost choked on the scone.
    “I think I might be ill,” I said.
    “Give it a minute, the nausea will pass,” said D.
    “Can I take the scones to the book club?” Mom asked D. “That might buy me