Read Online The Ninth Step by Barbara Taylor Sissel - Free Book Online

that bill?”
    “I don’t want to be in the middle of this, Tim.” Livie felt off-balance. She might agree with him; she might even sympathize, but to say so would feel disloyal to Kat.
    “I know, I’m the bad guy, the tightwad.”
    Livie winced.
    “It’s not like they’re starving. They aren’t running around half naked. Does it look to you as if they’re suffering?”
    “It’s not my place to judge.”
    “But you do; you think I’m hard on Kat. She has everything, you know.”
    Except her freedom, Livie thought. Her independence.
    Seconds of silence fell, tiny ticks of time.
    Tim said, “You don’t know her as well as you think.”
    “What do you mean?” Livie asked in spite of herself, in spite of her sense that Tim was right, she didn’t know Kat. Not as well as she once had and it hurt to be reminded, the way a bruise hurts when you press it with your finger.
    “She doesn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and stand on her feet for chump change anymore.”
    “She earned more than chump change, Tim.” Livie was stung into mounting a defense. “She was Mom’s partner, a co-owner at House of Hair. Neither of them has to work for tips anymore.”
    “Yeah, okay, but she can’t earn the kind of money she needs to be happy.”
    Livie bit her lip.
    “That’s what I give her.”
    He was proud that he did this for Kat, Livie heard it in his voice. And it bothered her that he knew Kat’s greatest vulnerability, that he would use her craving for security to manipulate her. But maybe not, maybe what Tim did for Kat was out of love. Maybe all he wanted was for Kat to feel safe.
    Or maybe love was always riddled with need and dependence.
    #
    Livie stood at the window looking out. Tim had said she didn’t know Kat. So, fine. But he hadn’t been there when they were girls, when she and Kat had formed their club: the Saunders Sisters Secret Service Club, they’d called it. They’d made a rule book out of pink and green construction paper and lined sheets from a Big Chief tablet. And rule number one had been that boys weren’t allowed. Rule number two was that everything they did (What had they done exactly? It had been so long, Livie couldn’t remember.) was a secret between them.
    They’d used to confide everything in each other, no matter how stupid or silly or seemingly inconsequential. And they’d told each other stories, Livie did remember that, how they’d made up elaborate stories for each other about what their lives would be like when they were grown up. They’d talked deep in the night or in the wee hours trying to drown with their own voices the lilt of their mother’s seductive laughter, the guttural sounds of her passion, the crescendo of orgasmic shouts. In the morning, when they couldn’t look at her, they had looked at each other.
    But Livie didn’t tell Kat her secrets nowadays with the same blind, loose faith that had hallmarked their childhood. She was afraid to. Afraid it wouldn’t be of help to either of them for Kat to know about the red dress and shoes, those nights. Joe. All the Joes. Suppose Kat hated her?
    #
    “Razz is fine,” Nancy said when Livie called to ask. “I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of a way to repay you.”
    “Oh, please, no, that isn’t necessary.” Livie was embarrassed and ashamed when she thought how her initial impulse had been to drive by the scene as if nothing had been amiss. “I’m glad I could help.”
    “But he’d be dead if it weren’t for you, if you hadn’t stopped. So many people wouldn’t have.”
    “I guess we’ll never know who the driver was.”
    “Perhaps that’s for the best.” Nancy said. “People like that ought to be shot.”
    #
    Livie found her keys and started out the back door, but for some reason she would never know, she stopped, retraced her steps through the house and went out the front door instead. That’s when she saw them: The dozen or so long-stemmed Japanese irises were wrapped in