Two Against the Odds Read Online Free PDF Page B

try to capture that tomorrow. No, she wouldn’t. Tomorrow she would work on Sienna. Or find the envelopes.
    â€œOh, God. My life is unfolding like a Greek tragedy.”
    â€œDon’t overdramatize. Everything will be fine.”Hetty draped a cotton blouse over a hanger. “I know you. You get blocked and it feels as if it’ll be forever. Then one day something clicks and away you go again.”
    Lexie slumped onto the bed. “I hope you’re right.”
    Hetty went to hang the blouse and clicked her tongue at the crowded closet. She pushed through the hangers and brought out a faded pink dress. “Honestly, Lexie, I recognize this from when you went to art school. Why not get rid of it?”
    Lexie’s mouth dried as she recalled being seventeen and living away from home in her first year at art school. She’d bought the dress because the cut was loose and hid her thickening waist. No one in her family knew, then or now, that she’d been pregnant.
    â€œIt holds memories. I—I can’t throw it away.” The crush of soft fabric between her fingers brought a sudden rush of grief and guilt. Why did she torture herself by keeping it around? She should get rid of it. In fact…
    What if it was all the excess stuff in her house that was blocking her? Declutter. Wasn’t that what all the women’s magazines were telling her to do?
    â€œOn second thought…” Lexie grabbed the pink dress and an armful of hangers and hauled them out of the closet.
    Seeing space open up felt good. With a burst ofenthusiasm she took down the folded piles of clothes from the shelf and threw them into the hallway along with the clothes on hangers. This might be another form of procrastination but at least it would achieve something.
    â€œWhat’s going on with you and Dad?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to reach the jigsaw puzzles. “I thought you wanted to get back together with him. I thought you were going to give him another chance.”
    â€œHe’s not giving me another chance,” Hetty said, hanging up her blouses in the space Lexie’d created. “Even though Smedley is fine, Steve still blames me for the dog eating fox bait.” Hetty’s voice wobbled. “Steve wouldn’t even look at me at the Fun Run. It’s been two weeks now and we barely speak. While I was at the yoga retreat in Queensland he converted our house to a bachelor pad complete with car parts on the kitchen floor and a pool table in the living room.”
    â€œGet him to change it back.”
    â€œHe’s never home to do anything! He’s out all the time, volunteering at the Men’s Shed Jack founded, at Toastmasters meetings….”
    â€œYou wanted him to find a hobby,” Lexie reminded her.
    â€œHe’s found a hobby all right.” Lexie read the anger in Hetty’s gray eyes. “Her name is Susan Dwyer.”
    Huh? Lexie dropped the puzzle boxes on top of thepile of clothes. Steve, her stolid conservative father, the man who’d been dependent on Hetty for years, had another woman? “No way. Dad wouldn’t have an affair.”
    Hetty lifted her shoulders, her mouth twisting. “What do you call it when he’s out with her three nights of the week? He says they’re on a committee to organize some speech contest or other. And he says she’s his mentor and is helping him with his entry. But he’s not the type to get caught up in committees. He has to be doing it because of her.”
    â€œNot necessarily,” Lexie said, trying to be fair. “Renita and I went to the Toastmasters meeting the night he did his Icebreaker speech. It was obvious he enjoys the meetings and everyone there, not just Susan Dwyer.” She paused before adding, “He really has changed while you’ve been in Queensland. Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
    â€œI don’t know him at all