Her Massachusetts Mix-Up by Tabitha Marks

 

Chapter 1

Emma

The sound of a vehicle approaching pulled me away from my study of the cornfields surrounding the farmhouse. The crop looked good this year. I was pleased with the progress—each of the stalks was nearly a foot tall, and it was only early June.

Well…pleased wasn’t quite the right word.

Satisfied, maybe?

No, that wasn’t the truth, either.

Resigned was the word I was looking for.

My future was in that corn, so, at the very least, I should be grateful, but it was difficult to scrounge up positive thoughts when the life I was living was far from what I’d envisioned for myself.

It was only in the dark of night, when I was all alone, that I dared to admit the truth. I was deeply, desperately unhappy.

But those thoughts weren’t appropriate for a sunny, early summer morning. Life happened. Things changed. You only get one family, and when I had to make tough decisions, I’d done what was best for everyone.

After slowly making its way down the long, dirt driveway, a rental truck pulled up in front of the three-car garage that now only held my father’s old pickup truck, currently my primary mode of transportation. My rust bucket sedan died two years ago and my mother’s SUV had been totaled in the crash that killed both my parents four years ago, and I’d never bothered to get anything else.

I set my coffee down and hurried to the front door, wondering who would possibly show up here with a rental truck. Had I forgotten to pay a bill and someone was coming to take our stuff? I discarded that possibility immediately, since everything we owned was old and paid for.

I peeked out the front window in time to see my little sister jump down from the driver’s seat of the truck.

I froze in shock. Lizzie was not supposed to be here, in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana.

She was supposed to be in Boston, working at her internship at a prestigious graphic design company.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch, planting my hands on my hips and scowling in her direction.

“What are you doing here, Elizabeth Ryder?” I demanded when she got close enough to hear me. Though, truth be told, the neighbors a mile away probably heard my shriek.

“Give me a minute, Emma. I just drove a thousand miles in that shitty truck, and I need to pee.” She stomped up the porch steps and rushed past me into the house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.

What. The. Hell?

I took a deep breath, and then another, while trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Not only had my sister returned home unexpectedly, but she’d also apparently been body snatched somewhere along the way.

My sweet little sister did not raise her voice, or talk back to me. And she certainly didn’t swear and slam doors. Or drive half-way across the country without letting me know!

My brain finally finished processing the events of the last five minutes. I rushed back into the house and slid to a halt outside the closed powder room door.

“What is going on, Lizzie?” I asked, my voice quieter, but no less demanding than before.

“Go away, Emma. Let me use the bathroom in peace!” Lizzie barked from the other side of the door.

I considered my options and decided the kitchen table was a good enough spot to wait. She wouldn’t be able to hide from me since I could see the closed door. “Fine, but don’t take too long. You have some explaining to do.”

“I’ll take as long as I want!” she shot back, then sighed loudly. “Can you make me something to eat, Emma? I’ve been on the road since five am, and have had nothing but water.”

If there was anything that could break through my confusion and panic, it was a request from my sister. She didn’t ask for much, so when she did, I always tried to give her what she wanted.

I quickly ran through the contents of the refrigerator in my head. “I’ll make breakfast. Pancakes or eggs?”

“Ugh. Pancakes, please. Eggs haven’t been agreeing with me lately.” Lizzie sucked in a breath and mumbled something I didn’t catch.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer to the door.

“Uh, do we have any berries? I’d like some on my pancakes if there are.” She sounded flustered, but I figured having a conversation while on the toilet would do that to anyone.

“I have some strawberries in the freezer. While I make the pancakes, I will thaw them.”

I left her to do her business and focused on my task, grabbing a jar of strawberries out of the basement freezer and a box of pancake mix from the pantry. I’d like to say I could make them from scratch, but I was no domestic goddess. While I enjoyed cooking, baking just wasn’t my cup of tea. Why should I make a giant mess of my kitchen, when one box was all I needed? Or, even better, I could purchase my baked goods ready-made from the bakery in town? They did a better job than I could ever hope to, anyway.

Simple but flavorful dinners were more my style. Nothing fancy, just good food.

I turned some music on and got to work, bopping around the kitchen as I whisked and flipped away. Music made everything better, in my opinion, and helped keep my brain busy so I didn’t focus on other things. Things I couldn’t change.

Fifteen minutes later, Lizzie sat down in her usual seat just as I stacked the last pancake on the plate and set it on the table.

“Do you want coffee or orange juice?” I asked, watching her take six pancakes and slather butter on them, then pile them into two stacks.

“Orange juice, please,” she replied as she scooped strawberries onto her plate, only stopping when each of the top pancakes had a mound of berries on top.

Sensing my sister was starving, I filled the biggest glass I could find with juice and placed it in front of her, getting a mumbled thanks as she chewed.

I shook my head and bit back the questions sitting on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I retrieved my abandoned coffee mug from the living room. After dumping the contents and getting a refill, I took my seat and made my plate, only taking two pancakes and one scoop of strawberries, just in case Lizzie wanted seconds. Though I couldn’t imagine where my five-foot-two, hundred and thirty pound sister was going to put any more food.

We didn’t speak while we ate, letting the classic rock mix I’d been playing fill the silence. I wanted to demand answers to the hundreds of questions swirling in my head, but Lizzie’s uncharacteristic behavior had knocked me off balance. Probably even more than her showing up unannounced.

My sister was an artist. A sweet, kind, well-behaved young woman that created award- winning designs on the computer and was living her dream, attending art school in Boston. Or, at least she was supposed to be.

What was she doing here? She had plans for the summer. Her grades were excellent—she’d sent me a copy, so I knew she hadn’t flunked out.

“I lost my internship.”

Her announcement startled me out of my thoughts.

“What? How? Did you ask them to reconsider?” I shot my questions at her rapid-fire, not giving her time to answer in between.

She waited in silence until I finished my barrage and shut my mouth. “I was late two days in a row. They refused to reconsider since they had a waiting list of qualified applicants who would be eager to get there on time.”

My face fell, and I knew my disappointment was plain. “So, why are you home? Couldn’t you get another internship?”

She shook her head. “No. They are all full by this time of the year, unless somebody else screws up, like me. But I doubt I’d get another company to accept me since I got fired by the best firm in the city.”

“What about a job?” I couldn’t figure out what she was doing here. If it was me, I’d have done whatever was necessary to stay in Boston for the summer.

“You can only stay in the dorms if you have a school sponsored internship. No internship, nowhere to live. I had to come home.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, which made my temper spike.

“You should have called and told me. I would have flown you home. It’s not safe to be driving across the country at your age.”

“I’m twenty years old, Emma. I know how to drive, and I know how to take care of myself.” When she saw me open my mouth to argue, she rushed to continue. “Besides, I couldn’t have flown. I had to empty my dorm room.”

I looked toward the driveway and the truck parked there, though I couldn’t see either from my seat at the kitchen table, and back at her. “All your stuff is in the truck?”

“Yep. We need to unload it and return the truck by six tonight, so we should probably get a move on.” She finished her juice and pushed back from the table. “Thanks for breakfast, Emma.”

My mouth gaped open like a fish as I watched her walk away and then heard the front door open and close behind her.

I still had a ton of questions, but apparently Lizzie was done talking. I didn’t know how I felt about this new version of my sister. While I’d wanted her to become self-sufficient and independent by going away to school, I wasn’t sure I liked the sassy attitude. Sure, she had some stubborn moments as a teenager, but they had been few and far between.

She might have ended our conversation, for now, but I needed more information, and if I had to use every trick I knew to get her to talk, I would.

Lizzie was my little sister.

My responsibility.

I’d given up my own dreams so she could go live hers.

There was no way she was just walking away without giving me all the answers I wanted.

No. Freaking. Way.

Four hours later, we were both sweaty and dirty from unloading the rental truck and hauling her stuff back into her old bedroom. Whatever didn’t fit, or she didn’t need, went into the equipment barn’s loft until she went back to school.

We made trip after trip. In and out of the house, back and forth from the truck to the barn. I had no idea where she’d accumulated all this crap, since we’d only half-filled the back of the pickup when I dropped her off less than a year ago. When I asked, she said there were a lot of good flea markets outside of Boston.

Despite my best efforts, I had gotten nothing else out of her about her plans and what happened except a non-committal grunt when I mentioned returning to Boston in August. She was somehow always heading the opposite direction of me, and anytime I squeezed in a question, she told me we’d talk later. We only paused to rehydrate a few times, agreeing that we wanted to finish the job as soon as possible. Luckily, this time of year the farm didn’t require too much work from me. The fields were planted and the weather was cooperating, so there was nothing to do but wait for the corn to grow.

Now we were taking turns in the shower, then heading out to return the truck. The closest location for the rental company was three towns over, so we’d be stuck together for the hour-long trip back home.

Then I’d get my answers.