Read Online No Place Like Home by Barbara Samuel - Free Book Online

years flat, and graduated together, and now that they’d been out in the workforce for two years, had decided they’d saved enough to get married. It was almost scary how sensible they were.
    The wedding itself promised to be an undertaking of Herculean proportions and would require the careful diplomatic planning of a peace treaty. Steve’s family was at least as enormous as ours, with roots that went back in the area a hundred years, with another three hundred before that in New Mexico. And while both families were Catholic, his family was Hispanic, with their own long traditions.
    “I’m so proud of you,” I said, touching Jane’s hand. “It’s going to be so wonderful.”
    Nana Lucy came to the doorway. “I’m ready to go home now.”
    Everyone stood up. Jasmine said, “I’ll just dash out and get Danny, and meet you around front.”
    Jane rolled her eyes at me, and I kept my face straight. Mama swatted Jane’s arm, which only made her grin. She leaned close to me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Alone?”
    “Yeah. Let’s go on out.”
    Dusk was gathering along the edges of the sky, and between the two mesas to the west where the Arkansas river flowed through, the sun glowed like a magic ball. I looked over my shoulder to the cottonwood at the edge of the yard, and the very top of it caught those long burnished fingers of light the way it always did, a reliable and beautiful thing that never failed to capture me.
    “What’s up?” I asked Jane, putting my butt on the porch railing so I could see in the door. Mama and Nana Lucy were fussing over Michael.
    Jane took a breath. “Well, um . . .” She tossed a lock of hair off her forehead, glanced down at the tip of her blazingly white tennis shoe. “This is hard.”
    “Hey, it’s me, remember?”
    “Yeah.” She raised her head, a charming little flush on her cheeks. “Okay, I’ll just say it. Can you teach me how to be sexy? Nobody else can do it. They don’t get it—they’re giving me white lace nightgowns, Jewel, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad, and nobody wants to tell me anything, and I just thought—” Her cheeks went completely crimson. “Oh, that’s bad, I mean, uh . . .”
    “You really are a virgin,” I said in some wonder. “That’s so cool!”
    “I guess,” she said in some misery. “But so is Steve, and neither one of us knows anything, and what if it’s a big disaster after all these years of waiting?” She was very close to tears.
    Impulsively I took her hand. “First of all, you are so beautiful that he’s going to just die when you take off your clothes. Trust me.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah, really.” I squeezed her fingers, and thought about the rest. How did a person learn, except by fumbling along in the backseats of cars or trading idiot stories with friends or making mistakes—unless someone told them? “I’ll help you pick out something decadent for your wedding night, if you like. And if you have specific questions, I’ll be happy to answer whatever I can. But most of the mechanical stuff you can find at the library. The rest, you’ll teach each other.”
    She wiggled a little, bending at the knees, then up again, a movement that made me remember her so clearly as a toddler. So much time. I’d lost so much time with her. “I just wish I could look like you,” she said.
    I felt ancient. The wise woman, the crone. “No, you don’t. You look like you, and that’s good.”
    “I know that part.” She sighed and pulled her hand out of mine, frustrated. “You aren’t listening. I mean look at you tonight—Nana was clucking her tongue before we even got in the house and Mom got all worried and I couldn’t see you so I didn’t know what the big deal was, but then I did see you, just sitting against the wall, so comfortable in your body and so sexy I just wanted to be you for five minutes.”
    “Keep talking, Jane,” I said. “You are
so
good for