In Need of Therapy by Tracie Banister

Author:Tracie Banister [Banister, Tracie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9781480035843
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2012-10-06T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“Your sister Ana’s on Line 2,” Margo told me as I walked into the office carrying my breakfast in a McDonald’s bag. “She said that she’s been calling your cell phone, but it keeps going straight to voice mail.”

“Oh, crap,” I mumbled the epithet to myself. I’d obviously forgotten to turn my cell on when I’d gotten into the car. Or maybe it was on and the battery was dead because I’d forgotten to recharge it again? I’d been so distracted lately I was becoming downright ditzy.

“I’ll take it in my office,” I said, heading in that direction.

“Ana?” I put her on speakerphone so that I could have my hands free.

“Pilar, finally!” I could hear the sound of my nephews fighting with each other in the background. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. First, I called the house and woke up Izzy, who was her usual charming self. Then, I tried to catch you in the car.”

“Yeah, I heard.” I dropped my briefcase and purse on the floor. “Sorry. My cell phone must be out of juice. What’s up?”

“I’m calling about Mamá.”

Oh, brother. I sat down and removed the lid from my coffee cup, figuring that I was going to need some caffeine to get me through this conversation.

“What about her?” I dumped two creams and a sugar into the dark liquid and used a plastic stirrer to mix it all together.

“She’s sick.” The high-pitched shriek of a three-year-old almost pierced my eardrums. “Charlie, don’t pinch your brother,” my sister ordered.

“Really sick, or nobody’s-paying-me-any-attention-so-I-need-to-fake-a-crisis sick?” I drank some coffee and winced when it scorched the tip of my tongue. Great, now I wasn’t going to be able to taste my food.

“Really sick. I got concerned when I realized this morning that I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days. George, where do you think you’re going with that butcher knife? Give that to me and go put a DVD in for your brothers. They’re giving me a headache.”

“Come to think of it, she hasn’t called me since Monday either.” The absence of hysterical rants and critical commentaries on my life had been quite pleasant actually.

“And that’s totally bizarre, right? Unless she’s mad about something, Mamá usually calls us both every day.”

“Well, she was in a snit about the whole burning couch incident, and I wasn’t very sympathetic . . .” I reached into the McDonald’s bag and pulled out my Egg McMuffin and hash browns.

“She didn’t even mention that when I called her this morning, so she must be over it.”

Not likely. I was sure that my mother would be telling the tale of her arsonist grandson ruining her fiftieth birthday party at every family gathering until the day we buried her, and then she’d probably have ‘Luisa Escobar Alvarez, Loving Wife and Mother, who lost the will to live due to the tragedy that befell her beloved sofa on 6/6/12’ etched on to her headstone.

“What’d she say then?”

“Not much. Just that she has some kind of flu.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.