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Sisters
Nancy Robards Thompson
Two halves of a wholeOnce, long ago, Skye and Summer had looked so much alike that no one could tell the twin sisters apart. Now there was barely a trace of a resemblance. Once, the two of them had been huddled together against a world that neither one of them could deal with alone. Now they hadn't seen each other for years.But it was time for them to get together once more–for Skye Woods and Summer Russo were on the road again. And this time they're in search of their other sister, Jane–the piece of the puzzle that, once inserted, might finally just make their family whole.Not normal, mind you. But whole…
“You can’t leave. You just got here.”
Oh, yeah? Watch me. I long to say the words, but my throat feels like it’s closing up.
“How can you do this, Summer?” Skye glares at me, her chin jutting forward. “I cannot believe you’re leaving….” She puts her hands on her temples, like the drama queen she is. “No, wait, yes, I can. It’s just like you to hightail it when things are tough.”
Oh. I’m tempted to slug her. My mouth is so dry, but I manage to choke out, “Now you wait just a minute.”
Skye throws up her hands. “Go your merry way and leave it all to me. You are undoubtedly the most selfish woman I’ve ever known.”
All I can think of as I watch her walk away is No one knows you like a sister.
Unless your sister doesn’t know you at all.
Nancy Robards Thompson
Award-winning author Nancy Robards Thompson is a sister, wife and mother who has lived the majority of her life south of the Mason-Dixon line. As the oldest sibling, she reveled in her ability to make her brother laugh at inappropriate moments and soon learned she could get away with it by proclaiming, “What? I wasn’t doing anything.” It’s no wonder that upon graduating from college with a degree in journalism, she discovered that reporting “just the facts” bored her silly. Since hanging up her press pass to write novels full-time, critics have deemed her books “…funny, smart and observant.” She loves chocolate, champagne, cats and art (though not necessarily in that order). When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking and doing yoga.
Sisters
Nancy Robards Thompson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
Before I started writing fiction full-time, I worked as a reporter for a Central Florida business newspaper. While there, I wrote a story about a local chef who’d organized a food bank that served the area’s homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Talking to him was a real eye-opener. He pointed out that in many cases people don’t choose homelessness because they’re lazy, that often mental illness plays a large role in the downward spiral that lands someone on the streets.
In my book Sisters, which is adapted from my manuscript that won the 2002 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award, a mother and her twin daughters set out on a road trip to find the youngest sister, who ran away from home when she was sixteen and chose to live on the streets despite numerous offers of family help. In the process, they confess secrets that heal wounds that have kept them apart for years and discover how compassion and understanding can lead to a richer purpose in life.
I hope you are inspired by their journey and that life brings you many blessings.
Warmly,
Nancy Robards Thompson
This book is dedicated to my wonderful brother,
Jay Robards, whose gentle ways and compassionate heart
set an example we should all live by. Thanks for helping me
with the details of homelessness and shelters.
Jay, your work changes lives. I am so proud of you.
Thanks to Gail Chasan and Tara Gavin for seeing
the vision in my work; and to Michelle Grajkowski for your
sage advice and unwavering support.
Thanks to my father, Jim Robards, for mapping
out the route from Florida to Missouri.
Thanks to Robin Trimble and Susan Pettegrew for educating me on the ups and downs of bipolar disorder.
Thanks to Pamela LaBud for teaching me
about coma recovery.
Deepest appreciation to Brock and Sarah McClane
for input on fractures.
Love and thanks to Teresa Brown, Kathy Garbera,
Elizabeth Grainger, Catherine Kean and
Mary Louise Wells for reading chapters at a moment’s notice,
for helping me when I’ve plotted myself into a corner
and for your constant friendship.
As always, deepest love to Michael and Jennifer.
You make my life complete.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER 1
Skye
Most people aren’t doing anything special when bad news barges in. It’s usually just a regular day.
The call comes on an ordinary Monday. The kids are at school. My husband, Cameron, is at work. I’m bringing in groceries from the SUV, hurrying because it’s going to rain. I can smell the showers moving in, that loamy-earth scent of decay and renewal, wafting from the back burner of summer’s last days.
I set the plastic bags on the granite-topped island in the kitchen and turn to go back out for the rest when the phone rings. I almost don’t pick up. But something—I’d call it a sixth sense, if I believed in such hooey—compels me to answer.
“Hello?”
“May I talk to Skye Woods?”
It’s a man’s voice I don’t recognize. Traces of a Spanish accent. I’m guessing he’s a solicitor and I get ready to tell him that we’re on the State of Florida’s Do Not Call list, that his company could receive a hefty fine.
“Who is calling, please?”
“Skye, it is Raul Martinez.”
My breath catches. Raul is Mama’s personal assistant. He’s a jack-of-all-trades, keeping her appointments for the foundation she’s set up to help the needy and making sure her life runs in order.
His voice is tight and low, and it raises gooseflesh on my arms. The spaces between his words hint at something ominous, like the angry clouds rolling in across the flat afternoon sky. I walk over to the sink and stare out the window.
It’s getting darker outside. The interior light of my vehicle glows like a beacon reminding me I left the lift gate open.
“There was an accident. Your mama, she is not doing so well.”
My hand flutters to my cheek and a strange tingling erupts inside me as if his words cut the vein of decades of bad blood built up between Mama and me. In an instant the poison rushes out of me like watershed, and I hear myself stammering. “Oh my—is she okay? Raul, is she alive?”
As I grip the edge of the sink, beads of rain on the window come into sharp focus. It makes patterns that shape-shift each time a drop breaks free. I get the strangest sensation that each time it changes, another minute of Mama’s life has slipped away…if she’s not already dead.
“It’s too early to tell,” Raul says. “She is in a coma. So you should get here pretty fast.”
I can’t believe this. Mama. In a coma? Ginny, hippie mother earth—the eternal free spirit who collected love children like genetic souvenirs. But in all fairness, Summer and I are twins. So technically, Mama only got pregnant twice. Still, no matter how you slice it, there’s nothing normal about having two different men father your children when you have no idea of one man’s identity. Last time I asked, she had it narrowed down to a list of about ten or fifteen candidates.
“After all, the sixties was the era of free love,” she always said. “At least I gave you life.”
But that’s not the issue right now. All of that and the upheaval it’s caused seem so insignificant in the face of…this.
I realize Raul just said something and is waiting for me to answer.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Can you telephone your sisters? I cannot find their numbers. The doctor said the next twenty-four hours are critical. So if you are coming, you should get here as fast as possible.”
Summer
I haven’t been back to Dahlia Springs in twenty-two years. Frankly, I haven’t had the time, money or the inclination. But when my sister, Skye, calls to inform me that our mother’s in a coma… Oh God.
What choice do I have? And it couldn’t come at a worse time.
I suppose if I were completely honest, I’d admit I don’t want to go home. Because Dahlia Springs isn’t home. Never was.
My home is here in New York. My job is here, my friends are here.
Who was it that said friends are the family you choose?
Whoever it was hit it dead on. I wouldn’t choose my family if I had the choice. But for some masochistic reason, I can’t cast them off, either. Despite the fact that my sister and I don’t see eye-to-eye on most issues. And our mother, Ginny, has had long-standing differences with Skye and me over the years.
Still, she’s my mother. That’s why I decide to purchase a plane ticket I can’t afford and travel to a place I don’t care to visit. Because the woman with whom relations have been strained at the best times and worse on other occasions is lying in a hospital bed in a coma.
“It might be a couple of days before I can get there. I may have to work a couple of days to give Gerard time to make arrangements. He’s behind schedule with the spring collection and—”
“Summer, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation.” Skye’s pitch veers into a sharp upper register and she’s slipped into that drawl she uses when she’s irritated, which is more often than not when we talk. “Mama may not last a couple of days.”
My stomach clenches, and I take a deep breath.
