Zero at the Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t have to accept this.”
    She started the engine and revved it a few times to fortify her courage. She would fight back.
    *   *   *
    Katherine was so stunned she forget to put the phone down until it began to buzz at her. Then she let her head fall forward and pressed her fingers hard into the base of her neck. Her lawyer had just finished reading the loan documents. There was no recourse, he told her, but to come up with the full $91,000 in the next twenty-two days. In response to her question about Ra, he’d said there was no question that the dog was part of the kennel assets. Too bad, he’d commiserated, but there it was.
    Then he’d asked the same question George Bob had asked: “Don’t you have some family who could help out?”
    She’d glanced down at the drawer containing the letter.
    “No,” she’d said into the phone. “No family.”
    As she massaged the tight cords in her neck, she thought about it.
    No family.
    Her mother had always impressed on her that they had no family except one another. Whenever Katherine had brought up the subject, Leanne had sat her down and reminded her that they were alone in the world. Katherine’s father was a maniac they would never see again. And her grandmother, Leanne’s mother, had disowned them forever when they moved to Boerne, had warned them never to come crawling back to her for anything. Leanne’s father had died when Leanne was sixteen and her only brother, Cooper, was nothing but a toady, always currying his mother’s favor.
    “My mother’s a greedy, selfish, unforgiving woman,” Leanne would say. “A spoiled, indulged woman who inherited a fortune and vowed never to give a penny of it to us. Anyway, we would prefer to starve to death rather than go groveling to her for anything.”
    Then Leanne would flash her dazzling smile and say gaily, “Anyway, the two of us are a family, aren’t we? We’re happy as we are, sufficient unto ourselves.”
    Sure, Katherine thought, sufficient until the next man came along. Thank God all that was over and she didn’t have to feel that abandonment anymore, now that she was grown up. But now, today, with these problems weighing her down, she felt strangely like that child cooking her own dinner, not knowing when her mother would come back.
    Katherine stood up from her desk and looked out the kitchen window to admire the billowy clouds in her big sky. Family? Who needed it!
    She heard the purr of a car pulling up to the kennel, then the slamming of doors, and the high twangy voices calling. “Yoo-hoo, Kate, Joe. Higgins, where are you?”
    Oh, no! The sisters Kielmeyer, come for their dog.
    She looked out the window. There they were, dressed in their usual floral traveling outfits and sensible shoes. They had known her when she was a girl, before she had decided to call herself Katherine instead of Kate. They were old friends and usually she was delighted to see them, but today she didn’t know if she could face them. Would it be better to let them see Higgins first? Or to rush out and try to explain everything before they saw the damage? But it was too late now. They were already bearing down on the kennel.
    Katherine called her dog. “Come on, Ra. You had something to do with this. Let’s face the music together.”

3
    JUDITH held the squirming Higgins on the shelf of her ample peach-flowered bosom. To a stranger it would look as if she were squeezing the life out of the little dog because his bright pink tongue dangled from his squashed-in black face. But Katherine had never seen him with his tongue in.
    As Katherine walked across the lawn, Ra ran forward to greet the women. Politely, he sat at their feet to receive his accustomed praise. Hester, the smaller sister at two hundred pounds, and the more talkative, leaned over and rubbed his ears vigorously.
    Ordinarily Katherine would be delighted to see them back, but not today. “Welcome home,” she said. “As you see, we had a problem while you