Wake-Up Calls

Chapter One

Kit Porterfield knew her sister was not going to die. Not, at least, anytime soon.

Even as she drove home from the hospital following yet another round of scans, even while it killed her to see Beth terrified of finding out where the cancer might now be hiding, Kit knew with absolute certainty that Beth was not going to die.

For the past five nights in a row, Kit had found herself in the exact same dream.

She’d watched as their late mother stood in a doorway, arm outstretched and beckoning, and in that no-nonsense, impatient way she had when she was alive and you weren’t moving quickly enough to suit her, she said, “Come with me, now, Bethy. It’s time to move on. ”

And every time, Beth refused. “No, Mom. It’s not time.”

Five nights. Same dream, same demand, same refusal.

In the dreams, they all looked exactly as they should: Kit, petite, short blond hair, rosy cheeks, a casual sweater worn over jeans; Beth, tall and pale, her dark hair long and curly as it had been before the chemotherapy had taken it, an old too-big sweatshirt and joggers hanging off her once-athletic frame; their mom, Barbara, whose height was somewhere between her two daughters’, her light-brown hair mixed with the gray she’d stopped coloring, looking neat and efficient in her Talbots slacks and crisp white shirt—tucked in, of course, and belted tidily.

Kit was a believer.

When Kit told her husband, Russ, about the dreams, he looked up from the TV, where a rerun of last year’s Tour de France played, and said, “That’s just your fear working you over.

You’re still recovering from losing your mom and now you’re afraid you’re going to lose your sister, too. It’s not hard to understand, Kit.”

For a moment, Kit had thought he was going to pat her on the head.

“I think you’re in denial,” he’d added, using the remote control to channel surf.

“The doctor said she was responding well to the new treatment,” Kit reminded him.

“He said it appeared she might be.” Russ shrugged and settled his attention on a documentary about a group of retirees hiking and biking through Europe.

Kit let the matter of her sister’s illness drop. She knew what she knew.

“Didn’t you watch that same show two nights ago?” She paused in the family room doorway and stared at the large screen.

“That was about a biking tour through Italy. This one is in France.” He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned.

“Doesn’t it look like fun? Gliding through all that beautiful countryside, up and down the hills, the wind in your hair, feeling completely free.

” He then turned halfway in his chair, took off his glasses, and smiled his most beguiling smile.

There had been a time when her heart had melted at the sight of that smile. These days, not as often. After thirty years of marriage, some of the bloom had faded from the rose. Nothing she could put her finger on, but sometimes they just didn’t seem as in sync as they once had.

“No, it looks like something best left to twenty-year-olds and their twenty-year-old knees.” The very thought of biking up and down hills made her wince.

His eyes narrowed as they did every time he perceived a reminder, however subtle or unintentional, that before she’d married him, she’d lived a life of privilege—and he had not. “Oh, right. You did all that knocking-around-Europe stuff when you were twenty. I forgot.”

Fat chance. He never forgot.

“It was fun then,” she admitted, “when I was twenty, but it’s not something I’d ever do again.”

“It could be fun the second time around.” He watched her face, clearly waiting for her reaction. “If we went together.”

“With these knees?” She pointed to hers, and the scars that remained following the surgeries that had replaced both. “Not on your life.”

“Those are both new knees. They’d be fine.”

“The left one might, but I’ve had that one longer. The right one is still a little wonky at times. Unstable.”

“Even after two years?” he asked, ever the skeptic.

“Yup. The difference maybe of having one done when you’re thirty-five and the other when you’re fifty-five. The rehab the first time around was tolerable, but the second time, not something I’d want to revisit.”

“So that makes two things you don’t want to do again.”

“Are you keeping a list?”

“Just saying.”

“Well, I stand by what I said. I doubt there’s a power on earth that could change my mind.”

He’d murmured something indiscernible as he turned but she didn’t ask him to repeat it. He was already in the throes of his new favorite show.

Feeling dismissed, Kit had gone into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. She sat on the cushy banquette seat, opened her laptop, and pulled up that day’s New York Times crossword puzzle while trying to shut out Russ’s sudden off-key rendition of “On the Road Again.”

Around four o’clock the following afternoon, Abby, the older of their two children, burst into their home carrying a suitcase in one hand and Benny, her two-year-old son, in the other arm.

She flew straight up the steps to the second floor, dark ponytail trailing behind her, her puffy winter coat hanging off her left shoulder.

Though she was yelling somewhat incoherently, Kit thought she’d gotten the gist of it: Abby had found her husband, up-and-coming playwright Evan Allen Kent, in a torrid lip-lock behind the curtains with the stage manager when Abby dropped into the theater at what was supposed to have been a rehearsal of his latest play.

“Abby,” Kit called up the stairwell after her daughter disappeared at the landing, “what’s going on?”

“Sorry. Sorry. Benny had a blowout in the car and he desperately needs a diaper change.” Abby appeared at the top of the steps, her face red and splotchy, a squirming, kicking, screaming toddler in her arms. “Mom, can we stay here for a while, Benny and me? Just until Evan and I straighten things out? Ow, Benny, that hurt. What did I tell you about biting?” Bottom lip trembling, Abby turned a tearstained face to her mother.

“Would you and Dad mind? I don’t know what to do.

My life is a mess and I—” She burst into tears.

“Of course you can.” Kit leaned on the newel post and looked up.

For one moment, she caught a glimpse of Abby as the little girl she’d once been, standing on the landing, her favorite doll dangling from one hand, crying over some now-forgotten pain.

Kit blinked, and the grown-up Abby came back into focus.

Kit met her on the top step and drew her and a dismayed Benny into an embrace.

She held them there for a few minutes, felt her daughter’s heart break, then held her until the storm had passed, all the while whispering assurances to her grandson that his mommy was okay.

When Abby’s sobs reduced to sniffles, Kit released her gently, patting Benny on the back as she did so.

“Good boy, Benny.” She soothed her wide-eyed grandson. “Abby, go ahead and take care of Benny. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Okay, Mom. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Kit wiped Abby’s tears with her fingers. “Now, if you could convince Benny to let go of my hair, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sorry.” Abby pried her son’s fingers from a hank of her mother’s softly highlighted blond hair.

Moments later, Russ called from the TV room, “Did I hear Abby and Benny? Is someone hurt?”

“Abby and Evan are having a problem and she wants to stay here while they sort things out. I’m sure she’ll explain more later, but it sounded like she said she caught Evan cheating on her.”

“What? Are you serious?” Russ came into the kitchen, glancing back in the direction of the stairs. “She said that?”

“We’ll get the full story soon enough, I suspect. Right now, she’s trying to settle Benny. It’s past his naptime.”

“The crib’s still in the guest room, right?”

Kit nodded. “Still there.”

“That bastard.” Russ’s burns were usually slow, but once he heated up, his temper could flare. “You told her she could stay, right?”

“Of course I did. For as long as she needs to.”

He shifted his focus in the direction of the stairs leading to the second floor. “Maybe I’ll just run up and see if she needs anything.”

“She’ll let us know if she does,” Kit told him, but he’d already left the room.

Kit’s cell phone began to ring, and she patted her pants pocket where she usually kept it, then spied it on the island countertop. She glanced at the number: Unknown Caller.

She rarely answered those. They were usually scams. She left the phone where it was. Some seconds later, she heard the ping that indicated someone had left a voicemail.

Wondering if it might be legit, she picked up the phone to listen to the message.

“Good afternoon. My name is Jeremy Banks. I’m an attorney up here in Tolerance, Maine, and I’m trying to locate Katherine Clark Porterfield.

I’m hoping that’s who I reached.” Kit’s free hand rested on her hip, wondering what the scam was going to be.

Grandson in jail needs bail? That was a popular one, she’d heard.

Unpaid taxes that needed to be paid on the spot or she’d be locked up?

That one had been going around for years.

“I represent the estate of Maxine Meadows, your late aunt—your late mother’s sister—who I’m sorry to tell you passed away last Monday morning.

Now, no worries about the funeral, that’s covered.

Actually, Maxine wanted to be cremated, and that’s being tended to.

She—that is, her cremains—will be here in my office whenever you want to pick her up.

She has left instructions for her final resting place—that would be in the family section of the cemetery here in town—and we can go ahead and do that when her cremains are here, or if you prefer to attend the burial, we’ll just hold on to her until you can make a trip up.

Now, about her will—as her only living relative, you’re the only heir, and I want to assure you that . . .”

Kit laughed out loud, deleted the message, and blocked the caller before slipping the phone into her pocket.

There most certainly had to be a scam in there somewhere. Maybe he was going to request she reimburse him for her “aunt’s” cremation. Well, joke’s on him. Her mother had been an only child.

After a chaotic dinner where Benny threw half his meal on the floor and his sippy cup at Wally, their sad-eyed basset hound who had come to do cleanup, two things the caller had said came back to her. Kit’s mother’s maiden name had been Meadows, and she had been born in Maine.

Kit pondered for a moment or two, then recalled the news special she’d seen several weeks before, a full half hour about how scammers had become more sophisticated in their efforts to separate the unsuspecting and the trusting from their money or their financial information.

Hadn’t there been a segment warning how scammers would search obituaries for information regarding the deceased and their survivors to attempt any number of scams?

Your aunt has left you an inheritance.

Of course she had.

Well, that was more clever than outstanding parking tickets or grandkids needing bail, though not by much. She wondered how many people fell for that “you’ve inherited” line.

Maxine Meadows probably didn’t exist at all. Kit dismissed the call and let Mr. Banks and whatever it was he was selling slip from her mind.