Page 31 of Leave It to Us
“She was such a pain in my ass,” Tami continued as she looked down at her notebook. “I could never do anything right in her eyes.”
“Is that why you tried so hard to do everything wrong?” Yvonne asked, and Tami’s head shot up.
“Stop it!” Lana snapped before the two of them could go at it again. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to make a decision on this house,thissituation and inthismoment. The past is in the past.” Those words were much easier spoken than believed, but something had to be said or else they’d sit here all night, reminiscing about how horrible a mother Freda Butler was—or, in Yvonne’s case, trying their damnedest to defend the indefensible. There were so many things their mother had said and done that had undoubtedly shaped the women each of them had ultimately become, but there was nothing any of them could do about that now.
“Fine,” Yvonne said. “The first decision is already made: we’re fixin’ up this house.”
“Right,” Lana replied. “Now, I don’t watch a lot of those home improvement shows, and Isaac and I own a condo that was brand new when we moved in five years ago, so there’s been no desire to make any changes.” And no extra money, either, if the desire had been there. “But I’m just guessing that all that stuff Deacon was talking about doing isn’t going to be covered by that fifty thousand dollars.”
“Most definitely not,” Tami said. “But that’s why I told Jeremiah we wouldn’t mind pitching in to help with some of the work if that’ll cut the costs. I mean, since we’re here, it doesn’t make sense that we walk along the beach and go into town for shopping sprees while they’re working on the house. We can just pull up our sleeves and get to work too.”
Yvonne frowned. “Like we did this morning with the sink?”
Lana couldn’t help it—the moment she said those words, the visual of her sisters on that wet floor laughing had her chuckling once more.
Tami laughed next, shaking her head as she looked at Yvonne. “Oh no, we definitely need to keep you away from any plumbing work.”
Just when Lana thought her older sister would keep the frown she’d been wearing, Yvonne’s lips spread into a wide grin. A warm and pretty smile, with that tiny dimple in her left cheek that Lana wished her sister would display more often.
“I don’t know,” Yvonne started to say.
“Oh, come on, y’all—we can do this!” Tami looked excited again as she stared from one sister to the other. “We have to do this. Despite our differences, we’re still family, and we can’t change that. Remember Grandma Betty used to say that all the time?”
Lana nodded. “Yeah, she did. Every time she caught us arguing, she’d come right in the room and say, ‘Y’all might as well stop all this yip yappin’ and get on with your day. You can’t choose your family, and there ain’t no receipts to return ’em.’”
“Oh my goodness, you sounded just like her saying that,” Yvonne said.
“You sure did. Your voice is husky just like hers was. Like you’d smoked just as many cigarettes as she had,” Tami added.
They all knew that wasn’t true; Lana had suffered from asthma really bad when she was growing up, so smoking or anything else that would further compromise her breathing wasn’t an option. But now that she thought about it, her voice was a little on the deep side like their grandmother’s. For some reason, having that connection to her made Lana feel better. Which was probably why she added, “Okay, I’ll agree to doing some minimal things to chip in on the work. But I want to keep a close eye on the budget and the schedule. This has to be done as soon as possible, y’all, so we can get back to our lives.”
“I agree,” Yvonne said. “And I know we don’t need to get into all the details right this moment, but at some point, we do need to talk aboutthe changes to the house that are necessary for Mama’s recuperation. Neither of you are there every day to see her continued struggles. So all I’m sayin’ is, the least you can do is chip in to make it a little better, even if you’re not going to come around more.”
When Tami opened her mouth to say something, Lana shook her head and held up a hand to stop her.
“You’re right, but we’re gonna take this one step at a time,” Lana said. “So let’s go down this list again, and then we’ll talk to Deacon tonight. See if we can get started in the next few days, like he said.”
Yvonne nodded and then stood. “That works for me. But I need a cup of coffee before we get into more details.”
“Works for me too,” Tami said, with a glance down at her notebook again. “But I need a stronger drink.”
“You stay drinking in the afternoon,” Lana said as she got up to follow Yvonne out of the room. “I saw some wine coolers in the refrigerator this morning. I’ll bring you one of those.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Tami called out as Lana left, and Lana just grinned because she knew her little sister would never change.
Chapter 14
YVONNE
Ms.Janie’s house was an old wooden structure that looked to have been added on to, by the discoloration on one half of the dwelling. It was what would’ve been called a ranch-style home in the city, with a long front porch and no railing—just the evenly spaced beams that held the flat-shingled roof above. There were folding chairs up and down the porch, most of them occupied by people holding paper plates loaded with food on their laps as they ate and talked.
Well, the talking kind of quieted down as Yvonne and her sisters approached. Sometime after their discussion about the renovations, Tami had gone for a walk down to Mr.Jemison’s backyard, where she’d rented a golf cart.
“We gotta be able to get around while we’re here,” Tami had told them when Yvonne and Lana had come out onto the front porch at the time they’d designated to leave for the gathering.
“Good thinking,” Lana had told Tami as she climbed into the front seat beside her.
Yvonne had eased onto the back seat and tried not to think about how different this felt from when they used to come here. Of course, there hadn’t been many cars on the island then, either, but riding ina golf cart, or on the bikes her father had purchased for each of them to keep at Grandma’s house, just hit different when you were a child than it did as a grown woman. Back in the city, she drove a Lexus RX, and as the sun had already set, on a day that had turned overcast in the late afternoon, she’d wished for the leather interior of her car, which would’ve surely kept her dry should an unexpected rain shower hit.
