“That sounds pretty good. Where do I sign up?” The last time she’d laughed with any sincerity had been when they were together all those years ago.

“Oh. My. God!” Tawny said loudly as she passed by the porch on the way to her cabin. “I’m hearing things. Harper just laughed. I didn’t know she could do that anymore.”

“Smart-ass!” Harper grinned.

“And a smile to boot! Run, Wyatt, run! The world is coming to an end. I think I see a meteorite.” Tawny threw a hand up in a theatrical gesture as if shading her eyes against the imaginary ball of fire coming toward them.

“Y’all are crazier than you were when we were all kids,” he laughed. “Want a beer, Tawny?” He held up a plastic ring with three still attached.

“Don’t mind if I do. Thank you, Wyatt.”

A stab of jealousy pricked Harper in the heart when Tawny sat down beside Wyatt on the top step. But it disappeared when he hopped up and said, “Wait, I see my first truckload of guys arriving. So I’d better get on down there. We’ve got a poker game in my cabin planned. See y’all around.”

Unaffected, Tawny opened her beer and took a long gulp. “I called Mother after work tonight.”

“And?”

“She says that if we come home and do something important with our lives, she’ll forgive us,” Tawny said.

“You goin’ home?”

“Nope. I told her that it’s not a matter of her forgiving us but of us forgiving her. You ready to tell me what it was that got you disowned? What in the devil did you do to survive? There’s no way anyone would let you bartend at that age. How did you live from the time you were sixteen until now?” Tawny asked.

“Nope, I am not ready to tell you that story. I will tell you this, though. For about six months, I worked at an animal shelter. Got a free room at the back of it for taking the night shift. Anyway, one night this man left a whole litter of Doberman pups on the doorstep. I had to get up every two hours all night to feed those critters. Didn’t lose a single one of them.” Harper smiled at the memory.

“And that has to do with what?” Tawny asked.

“Patience.” Harper took the final sip of her beer. “I’m gettin’ to that part. When I asked the manager lady about it, she said that Dobermans sometimes just don’t have the right mother instinct. The pups start to bother the mom with their incessant whining and wanting to eat all the time, so she retaliates by biting them or pushing them away to starve.”

“I think I’m gettin’ your point,” Tawny said.

“Yep, our mother is a Doberman. She had us because Daddy wanted kids to ease his guilt over not claiming Dana. She doesn’t have any mother instinct. She left us with nannies and babysitters and only brought us out when we were all pretty and clean for family pictures. She is what she is,” Harper said.

Tawny finished her beer and set the empty can on the porch. “Have you forgiven her for what she said and did to you? It was awful at the house after you left. I begged them to let me move here and live with Granny.”

Harper inhaled so deep that her lungs hurt and then let it out slowly. “I forgave her a long time ago. She’s not worth the pain and suffering. I just hope that I got Granny Annie’s big heart when it comes to children and not hers,” Harper answered.

Tawny scooted over and braced her back against the porch post. “You think you’ll ever have kids? You willin’ to take that kind of chance?”

Harper shrugged. “Are you?”

“I like kids, so maybe if the right man came along,” Tawny answered. “What happened to all of those puppies?”

“I didn’t leave that job until I’d found a good home for each of them.” Harper nodded.

“That’s good,” Tawny said. “Maybe we should send Mama a picture of the two of us huggin’ a Doberman.”

“Wouldn’t do a bit of good. She’s never had to admit that she was wrong. Daddy adored her and let her run the place and us. She’d just wonder why in the hell we were sending her a picture of us with a dog,” Harper chuckled.

“Probably so. Good night.” Tawny groaned when she got to her feet. “Too many hours sitting in front of a computer, but I think I’m getting this business figured out.”

“Try standing on your feet all day,” Harper said.

“No, thanks. I’ll take kinks over aching arches.”

When Brook was a little girl, she and Dana had watched animated cartoons, and then slowly they’d graduated to more mature movies and even television series on either Friday or Saturday nights. Brook’s newest love was MacGyver, a remake of an older show that now had two seasons on DVDs, so they usually ended the week by watching it over and over. But that night she’d gone off to the mall with Tawny, and Dana felt the emptiness as she sat on the grass at the edge of the lake.

Down around Houston, when someone mentioned a beach, visions of sand, seagulls, and water all the way to the horizon came to mind. But in north central Texas, the image changed to green grass, ducks, and lights in the summer homes on the other side of the lake.

Get used to it. That’s why you have sisters. The kid grows up and leaves home, and you’d have no one if it weren’t for your sisters. The voice sounded a lot like her grandmother’s.