Triple Exposure by Colleen Thompson

Kathy’s voice held a strength that Marlene both envied and resented.
    “Our father was a loving man. So loving, he couldn’t imagine a woman drained of everything that made her human.So he made excuses for her, babied her instead of demanding that she stop this nonsense and get back to her old self.”
    “You can’t force a person to get better. You can’t just demand that she snap out of it.”
    “I’m finished with her, Marlene. My own kids need me here now, and my boss—I could get fired for taking off more time after coming back.”
    “Fired? I thought things were going so much better at this new place.” Marlene, who had worked in the same office more than ten years, had lost track of how many times her sister had changed jobs. She was beginning to suspect that Kathy herself was the problem, not the “crazy bosses” and “bitchy co-workers” she blamed.
    “Well, I didn’t mention it,” said Kathy, “but I took off kind of a lot back when Bryce and I were separated. So between that and the funeral, I’m going to have to work through my vacation to catch up on the backlog. Besides, the price of flights is ridiculous on short notice.”
    “What if I helped you with the ticket?” Marlene knew her husband wouldn’t like it, but she had some money squirreled away toward a new sofa and recliners for the family room.
    “It’s not just the cost. It’s—it’s Mother. After all this time, all her rejection, I’m finished pretending I feel something for her when I don’t.”
    Her sister still cared. Marlene knew it. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing. Once Kathy dropped into Mule Mode, nothing short of dynamite could move her. “So I’m on my own in this?”
    “I’m really sorry. If I could do it for anyone, Marl, it would be for you. But I can’t. I just— can’t.”
    Marlene’s temper flared as she wished that, for once in their lives, she had the luxury of refusing. “You mean you won’t.”
    She banged down the phone in a rare display of temper, but the two sisters’ estrangement didn’t last long.
    Only a few short hours later, Marlene called Kathy fromthe house where both of them, along with their dead brother, had grown up.
    The place stood empty, every door and window open. Only a few things were missing. The bedclothes, stripped from one bare mattress. A photo album, and a macabre collection of news clippings. A purse, cosmetic bag, and a few articles of clothing.
    And the woman herself, their mother, who had left without her Cadillac…or a word to anyone to explain where she had gone.
       
    The morning’s clouds had long since rolled back by the time Rachel returned to Zeke Pike’s place. She parked behind his pickup, a dust-covered blue Chevy even older than her van, then climbed out, leaving her leather jacket tossed across the passenger seat. For a minute, she stood beside the corral in the late afternoon sunshine, allowing it to warm her through her cotton blouse and jeans. Or maybe she was stalling, dreading another meeting with a man as jarringly abrupt as his name.
    He might have startled her at first, in the wake of the unexpected phone threat, but Rachel suspected Mr. Personality was more afraid of her—of everyone—than she was of him. Despite his attempts to alienate her, she found herself wondering what would drive such a man to a solitary life on the high desert.
    As the pinto mare nickered and stretched her neck forward, Rachel figured that, gruff or not, Zeke didn’t lack for offers of companionship. She rubbed the mare’s neck while her mind conjured a green-eyed man whose thick hair was dark, wavy, and just long enough to look disreputable, and whose skin had been bronzed and weathered by the elements. A man like that with a build like his could have his choice of women.
    If women were his choice. She considered, then immediately discarded any other possibility. Zeke Pike was definitely a hair-on-the-chest, beef-in-the-belly,