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Charley, Sisters by Design, book 3

By Sharon Srock

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Chapter 1
“Then Drew called Spencer a toad-licking suck-up.”
“Kinsley!” Charlene Hubbard glanced at her husband Jason, who appeared to be biting his lip to keep from laughing out loud. She smacked his shoulder before turning to send a disapproving look to her daughter in the back seat of their car. “That’s not very nice.”
Fourteen-year-old Kinsley bent her head over her cup. Her blond hair curtained her face, and the dregs of her chocolate milkshake rattled in her straw. “Drew said it, not me.” She looked up with her trademark impish grin. “But as far as I’m concerned…Spencer and Drew are both missing a few brain cells.”
Charley looked at her daughter, doing her best to repress a snort of amusement. This girl.
Jason lost his battle with parental propriety. His laughter rang through the car. “You just keep thinking that, baby girl. As long as you think of boys as inferior lifeforms, your mother and I maintain the advantage.”
Charley decided to ignore them both and settled back in her seat. A sigh of contentment crowned their nearly perfect Tuesday evening. She and Jason, both employed as cops with the Garfield, Oklahoma, police department—and hardly ever on the same schedule—were enjoying a stretch of matching shifts. They’d had the evening off, together. With Kinsley volunteering at Grace Community’s Vacation Bible School this week, husband and wife had enjoyed a little quiet time and some shopping for their daughter’s upcoming fifteenth birthday. Then the trio had shared a late dinner, complete with milkshakes for dessert.
As the clock inched toward nine, the late July sun hovered low on the western horizon, a fiery orange ball draping the world in soft light and long shadows. Charley pulled herself out of her introspection and focused in on the father-daughter conversation regarding the boys in Kinsley’s age group.
“They’re all dorks,” Kinsley said. “They walk around us girls all manly and superior”—her voice dripped with sarcasm—“but put them in a room with three or four fifth graders, and it’s like they never grew up. Blowing bubbles in their milk with a straw up their nose or talking about how to make someone throw up. It’s disgusting.”
Charley laughed. “How were Sean and Benjamin this evening?” She knew the question about the Conklin twins would sidetrack her daughter’s tirade. The handsome twins, bound for college in the near future, were the focus of Kinsley’s alternating crush.
Puppy love sighed from the backseat. “Dreamy as always. They—”
Charley’s cell phone rang. “Hold that thought.” She glanced at the number but didn’t recognize it. “Hello…” Silence greeted the word. “Hello.”
“Charley.” The voice on the other end of the connection hesitated. “It’s Melissa.”
The words, and the long forgotten voice behind them, sucked the oxygen out of the vehicle. Charley tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear and slid one hand across the seat to grip Jason’s. With the other she lowered the sun-visor mirror to look at her daughter. Kinsley was engrossed with something on her own phone. The evidence of her daughter’s lack of concern stripped the elephant sitting on her chest of ten pounds.
Jason cut his eyes her way and mouthed, What’s wrong?
Charley squeezed his hand and drew in a ragged breath. Melissa. She mouthed back.
Jason’s eyes widened at the name.
“Hi. What can I do for you?”
“I’m in Oklahoma City. I was hoping we could get together.”
“I…we…” Charley stuttered, looking for her balance.
“It’s been a long time, and I know this is unexpected, but it’s important.”
Another glance at the mirror. Kinsley had her earbuds in now, totally oblivious to the fact that the woman who’d given her life and then given her away was on the other end of her mother’s phone.
“It…it’s late,” Charley stammered.
“I meant tomorrow, of course.”
Something in the tone of her old friend’s voice set alarms clanging in Charley’s head. “Can you tell me what you need?”
“I’d rather do it in person. I can be in Garfield by eleven—”
“No!” Charley’s raised voice drew a look from Kinsley. Charley shrugged, smiled at her daughter, and lowered her voice. “I’ll come to you. I’ll call you back first thing in the morning and we can decide on a time and place.”
“That’s fine, I’ll—”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” Charley disconnected the call. Dread weighed heavy in her stomach.
“Who was that, Mom?”
Charley met her daughter’s eyes in the mirror and forced a smile she hoped looked more casual than it felt. “Just…an old friend.” She returned her focus to the passing scenery. The light had faded, leaving the world outside the car gray and bruised around the edges…just like her future.
***
“Well?”
Melissa laid the phone aside, looked at Keith, and licked her dry lips. Weariness and thirst were constant companions these days. She looked longingly at her husband’s can of soda. “Can I have a sip of that?”
Keith opened an app on his phone and studied the screen. “You have six ounces of liquid left for the day and you still have to take your bedtime pills.”
“What would I do without you to keep me honest?” Her voice crackled past her dry throat. “I’ll cut my nighttime drink to four ounces. Even if I go an ounce or two over today, I’m scheduled for another treatment tomorrow.”
“But the additional sodium—”
“Won’t kill me.”
Keith flinched. “Don’t say that.”
“Sorry…I just meant...” She motioned to the can. “Just a sip? It seems like forever since I tasted a cola.”
Keith went to the small bathroom in their hotel room and came back with a glass wrapped in plastic. He dug out the measuring cups that had become part of their daily lives. Melissa hated those cups, and she hated the fact that Keith was so meticulous with them.
He loves you, and he wants to keep you as healthy as possible.
She accepted his motivation, but she refused to like the process.
He filled the quarter cup measure to the brim with soda and transferred it to the glass without spilling a single precious drop. The two ounces of liquid in the cup hardly seemed worth the effort. Melissa took it and held it to the light like a fine wine. She emptied it into her mouth, and swished it around to wet every parched crevice before swallowing.
“Aww…” Her eyes drifted closed as the carbonated bubbles tickled her throat. “That tastes so good.”
“So what did she say?” Keith prompted, refusing to be sidetracked for long.
“She’ll call me in the morning. We’ll arrange a time for me—”
“Us,” he corrected.
Melissa shook her head. “Me.” She lifted a hand to stave off his objections. “I need to do this by myself. Charley’s an old friend. Our conversation will be easier if we keep it between the two of us.”
Hope lit her husband’s eyes. “Then you’re going to ask her?”
Melissa looked away from his eager expression. Not now, not ever. But she didn’t say it. “There’s no reason to go there at this stage of the game. I’ll tell her what she needs to know. We’ll work from there.”
“But—”
“Keith, I’m not saying no. I’m just saying that it seems more logical to work through this a step at a time. There’s no reason to ask the questions you want answered before we find out if that’s even a possibility.”
A deep sigh echoed between them before her husband turned away. This illness was taking a toll on more than just her. Keith had been her rock, but the latest news from her urologist had stripped them both of hope. When Keith spoke next, the emotion in his voice twisted a knife through Melissa’s heart.
“We’re running out of time.”
Melissa absorbed the words. “But this solution, even if we find out that it could work, is still three years away.”
“We’ve had this conversation. There are precedents—”
“And even that requires patience. Charley and her husband helped me out of the biggest problem in my life almost fifteen years ago. I never dreamed I might need to ask more of our friendship than I already have. You need to let me handle it.”
Keith crossed to where she sat, held out a hand, and pulled Melissa to her feet. His every motion conveyed both tenderness and tension. “I can’t lose you.” He tucked Melissa’s head into the space between his collarbone and his chin. “If there’s any way to save you, I’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen.” He led her to the bed he’d turned down earlier. She climbed in, and he pulled the blankets over her. “You must be tired after the drive. Get some rest. Tomorrow will be a difficult day.” He stooped down and brushed her lips with a kiss. He stared into her eyes for a few seconds before striding from the room.
Melissa watched him go before she sank back into the pillows. Love for him swelled her heart. Worry about him constricted her chest. Never in the ten years of their marriage had they been so at odds over how to handle a situation. But then they’d never handled life and death until now.
***
Charley stood in front of the double bathroom sink, removed her earrings, and scrubbed the makeup from her face. Jason brushed his teeth. Their eyes met in the mirror. Hers green and troubled, his brown and confused. He braced his hands on the counter, leaned over the sink, and spat.
“What do you think she wants?” His voice pitched over the running water.
Charley tossed the cleansing wipe away and pulled a brush through her short blond hair. “How would I know?”
He continued to study her in the mirror as he twisted the faucets closed. “You two were pretty tight back in the day.”
She dropped the brush into a drawer. “Tight twenty years ago doesn’t mean I can read her mind now. We haven’t heard a peep out of her in all these years. She must have a good reason for calling now, but guessing at it seems pointless.”
“But—”
Charley slammed the drawer, her voice frustrated and harsh. “Can we just not talk about it until we have something to talk about?” She strode from the room, the bottom of one of his old T-shirts brushing her thighs.
Jason was right behind her. “Will you keep your voice down?” He dodged around her, opened their bedroom door, and looked out into the hall. Satisfied with what he saw—or maybe what he didn’t see—he latched the door and leaned against it. “This is not a conversation Kinsley needs to hear.”
Anxiety flooded Charley’s throat with words, but she forced them back. They’d be as useless as his questions. She crossed her arms and took a couple of deep breaths, the pleasant dinner she’d enjoyed earlier now a heavy weight in her stomach, threatening an untimely revolt.
Charley looked at her bare feet. He was right. She needed to get ahold of herself. Easier said than done. She looked up when the blankets on the bed rustled. Jason turned the bed down and settled onto his half of the mattress. He patted the spot beside him.
“Come here.”
She circled the king-sized bed, switched off the lamp on her night stand, leaving the room in darkness, and scooted into her husband’s arms. The monsters in her imagination receded within his embrace. Despite her troubled heart, the thought made her smile. Charlene Renee Hubbard—gun carrying, take-no-flack, suck-dirt-you-scumbag cop by day—just needed a hug sometimes. The room grew quiet except for their breathing. And in the dark Charley found the courage to voice her fears.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m afraid.”
His arms tightened. “You and me both. I’m sorry too. I was asking you questions you couldn’t possibly answer.”
Charley thought of their daughter, their daughter, sleeping in the next room. “Did we mess up?”
“We’ll tell her when the time is right,” Jason said. “The Bible says that there is a time for everything.”
“And if that time is now?”
“Then we face it and do what we’ve always done. We put Kinsley’s needs first.”
“And we pray?”
“We pray.” He snuggled her closer. Charley closed her eyes and waited for his words.
“Father we come to You tonight, thankful for everything You’ve given us.”
“Thankful but worried,” Charley added in a whisper and felt Jason’s nod of agreement.
“We’ve always looked to You for strength and wisdom. We know that You’ve been a part of our family from day one, and we know that today didn’t take You by surprise. Tomorrow won’t either. Whatever it is that Melissa needs, give us both direction. We need Your light on our path to know what’s best for our family.”
Charley picked up the prayer. “Please don’t let fear and doubt cloud our minds.” She stopped, remembering the odd tone in her old friend’s voice. “And give Melissa clarity as well. Whatever the problem is, help us work together for a solution.”
“Father,” Jason continued. “Your will for our lives, our family, and our future.”
Charley drifted to sleep with the words of her husband’s prayer in her ears.

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