Body Check by Deirdre Martin Page A

straightened up when he saw her, the bright eyes, set deep in his ruddy, weathered face, twinkling with delight. Peeling off his dirt-caked gardening gloves, he let them drop to the ground and came forward to hug her. Janna reveled in the comfort of his crushing embrace as she took in his scent: light sweat mixed with Dial soap, an aroma that took her straight back to childhood, to the happiness of time spent with him.
    â€œHow’s it going?” she asked, inspecting the beds. Everything she knew about gardening, she’d learned from her father. How many hours had they spent together poring over seed catalogs, planting and digging, weeding and watering? She wasn’t sure which had been his greatest gift: his unwavering belief in her, or the love of gardening that he’d passed on. She was certain she never could have survived her crazy childhood without both.
    â€œThey’re taking over,” her father replied in answer to her question. “I’m trying to get them trimmed back before they choke out everything else.”
    Janna nodded sympathetically. He looked tired; then again, when didn’t he? Patrick MacNeil was known as a “workhorse.” Back when he’d first started out, working in construction, he was renowned for his sheer brute strength and stubborn endurance. There was no task his squat, square body wouldn’t tackle and keep at until it was done, and done properly. It was that same determination that had allowed him to strike out on his own as a builder.
    Now, thirty-five years later, he sat at the head of a small building empire, the word delegate nonexistent in his vocabulary. He oversaw every detail of every operation from start to finish. Janna knew it was more than a matter of pride. She’d figured out long ago that losing himself in work gave her father a much-needed respite from the battleground that was his marriage.
    As if on cue, Janna heard her mother’s tinkling laughter float through the open front door. Courtney MacNeil was the Town & Country woman come to life: tall, regal, unmistakably WASP. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she had never quite forgiven Janna’s father for temporarily yanking it out during their early years together, despite the fact that his business now earned more money than she could spend in a lifetime—although God knows she was trying. At fifty-four, she had the body of a woman half her age, and people viewing her from a distance, struck at first by her long mane of ash-blond hair, often mistook Courtney for one of her daughters, usually Petra or Skyler, which pleased her immensely.
    Janna loved and hated her mother simultaneously. Loved her because a child doesn’t know how to do anything else, and hated her because her mother had always made her feel she was lacking. Sandwiched as she was between her older sister, Petra, who was tall and brilliant, and her younger sister, Skyler, who was tall and gorgeous, Janna was the odd girl out—pint-sized, ordinary, the classic middle child who fought to shine but never even managed a flicker. At least not in her mother’s eyes. One of her most painful memories was hearing her mother say to a room full of guests at a party, “Petra’s got the brains, Skyler’s got the beauty, and Janna”—here she had paused with pursed lips, obviously trying to think of something to say—“Janna’s got the drive.”
    The drive . As if that was something lesser. No wonder she had always gravitated toward her father. He understood drive, didn’t see it as gauche or somehow grasping the way her mother did. She looked at her father now, and tears began welling in her eyes. He was the one who had encouraged her to start her own business, who believed in her savvy, who told her repeatedly not to give up. So why had she? Why did she work for big corporations, and not for herself? The answer was simple: fear. She was afraid of failing. Afraid