Read Online The Good Sister by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online

reached out to her closest sister—in age, friendship, and proximity, as Frankie lives in Albany—and updated her on the situation with Carley. Not only is Frankie a social worker, but as both godmother and childless aunt, she adores Jen’s daughters.
    “What can I do?” she asked immediately.
    “Is there any way you can come this weekend? Maybe Carley will open up to you more than she has to me.”
    “I have to go to Long Island for a conference. But I’ll be there next weekend—Ma’s doing Saint Joseph’s table on Sunday, remember?”
    Somehow, Jen had forgotten. Saint Joseph’s Feast Day is right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas in their family. They used to celebrate on the actual day, March 19, but now that everyone is scattered, her parents gather everyone on a weekend before or after. That means Jen will be spending the days leading up to it in her mother’s kitchen as usual, helping to prepare the labor-intensive feast.
    “When is Aunt Frankie coming?” Carley asks now.
    “Friday, as soon as she gets out of work. She wants to take you out to the Cheesecake Factory”—that’s Carley’s favorite restaurant—“and maybe to a movie.”
    “Me and Emma?”
    “Just you.”
    Carley digests that. “How come?”
    “Because you’re charming and adorable,” she quips, hoping her daughter will crack a smile.
    Nope.
    “Is Aunt Patty coming, too?”
    Patty is Frankie’s longtime significant other. A rotund woman with a magnetic personality and an easy laugh, she might be just what the doctor ordered for Carley right now. But alas—
    “She’s working next weekend, Aunt Frankie said.”
    Carley looks disappointed. “She’s always working.”
    “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”
    Patty, a paramedic, seldom has enough time off to make the four-hour drive to Buffalo with Jen’s sister.
    “Aunt Frankie is always working, too. I bet they wish they could trade places with you and do nothing all day every day.”
    Carley’s comment is intended to be innocent enough, Jen knows, but it stings nonetheless. She’s tempted to point out to Carley that she’s hardly a lady of leisure.
    It’s all she can do to keep up with the housework around here, making sure everyone has everything they need on a daily basis, like prescription refills and permission slips and today, a last-minute egg carton for Emma’s overdue science project . . .
    Jen hastily emptied the eggs right onto the refrigerator shelf and sent Emma on her way. But when she opened the door again to grab the coffee creamer, several loose eggs rolled into each other, then onto the floor.
    No surprise there. She’s always dropping things, a lifelong klutz. Clumsiness goes hand in hand with impetuousness. But so, for Jen, does resourcefulness.
    Rather than let the eggs—which cracked, but didn’t actually break—go to waste, she started baking. First, she made a sponge cake to bring to the people who just moved in two houses down the street.
    Well, not just . It’s been a few weeks since she spotted the moving van in the driveway, but she wanted to give the new residents—a single dad and his teenage son, according to Carley, who babysits for the Janicek family next door to them—some time to settle in before showing up to welcome them to the neighborhood. She’s been hoping to catch them coming or going so that she can introduce herself, but so far, that hasn’t happened. Not that she’s noticed, anyway. She’s been distracted by what happened to Carley at school.
    While the sponge cake was in the oven, she mixed a batch of peanut butter cookies, Carley’s favorite.
    It seemed like a good idea at the time. Probably because that’s how her own mother always shows her love or handles a crisis: by feeding people. It’s a wonder Jen and her sisters weren’t overweight, growing up—especially Frankie, a notorious junk food fanatic.
    But kids were so much more active back then. These days it’s all about technology and