Read Online The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones - Free Book Online

up.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “I’m going to hit the kitchen now.”
    At least she’d given him something to mull over, she thought, watching him go slowly. Perhaps, thoughtfully?
    When he reached the beam of light, he paused.
    Moxie held her breath, hoping he might share something deep, meaningful. That he might finally peel away that romantic, broody-hero image to reveal the real man beneath.
    He turned.
    She waited.
    And in the stream of light, he met her gaze, shook his head and chuckled softly before heading off to do the job he should have demanded his son take on.

Chapter Four
    â€œA re you sure this is the right place?” Jo had gotten out of the car and come around to help Kate.
    The drive had taken longer than they had expected. First, they hadn’t gotten away as early as they’d planned because they’d had to convince their mother that it would be a bad thing for her to tag along.
    Despite getting Dodie to say she understood time and again why they wanted to go down first for a few weeks so Kate could heal and they could get a feel for the place, as soon as they started to get ready to go, their mom would hit a mental Reset button and hurry around trying to pack and come with them. The old girl wasn’t loopy, she just thought that since Florida had been her idea, she ought to actually go there.
    And if she went, it only seemed fair, came the next step in the reasoning process, that her girlfriends who wanted to share the property with her come along, too.
    To which Kate promptly—and loudly—proclaimed that if they were all going, she wasn’t.
    And Jo would rush to point out that the primary purpose for the trip was to help Kate recuperate and having all these older ladies to chauffeur around and take care of would wreak havoc with Jo taking care of Kate.
    The solution to it all came when Dodie offered to drive herself and her friends down. As soon as she heard that, Kate, making sad eyes and a truly pathetic whimpering sound, played her trump card.
    â€œDrive, Mom?” She patted her cast. Winced and gripped the cane in a white-knuckled grasp. “I’d really feel safer if you didn’t.”
    Dodie backed down.
    Kate felt a wee bit bad about it.
    Jo loaded up the car with Kate and all their cases, kissed her mom farewell, then headed down the nearest highway headed southeast.
    They got away early but the drive itself dragged on forever. Atlanta traffic, Kate’s need to keep fed and medicated, and to walk periodically to avoid problems from sitting too long in one position all played a part in the delay.
    When they finally rolled into Santa Sofia, it was more than an hour past six o’clock, the time that they had told the caretaker to expect them. They called to let her know and learned that she was going to be unavailable to help them tonight. Something about a long steamy shower, a fistful of allergy medicine and a phone off the hook.
    They didn’t mind, they told her and hoped to see her the next day. Or the next. No big hurry. She hadn’t seemed particularly anxious to encounter them, anyway.
    They had some trouble finding the old place after that and, true to her word, when they called the caretaker, they got an answering machine. Nothing in town looked the way Kate remembered it. Here and there a landmark stood out. The pizzeria on the corner downtown, where she and Vince had taken Gentry every Friday night, had morphed into a mega-chain coffee shop.
    â€œI can’t believe what they did to that cute little pizza place. Remember how they used to actually toss the dough in the air and cook it in these big ovens?” Kate asked Jo. “And how upstairs was a…Oh, what was it?”
    â€œA Junior League thrift shop?”
    â€œYou remember it?”
    â€œNo, I’m looking at it.”
    Kate followed her sister’s line of vision. “Oh, great. Now I’m completely turned around.”
    A few right turns