Free Shattered by Karen Robards

expert horsewoman, she'd been a fiercely competitive golfer, loved tennis, and been known throughout the state for throwing the most extravagant parties around. Her Derby bashes in particular were legendary. Always the center-piece of her mother's life, Lisa had been encouraged to invite her friends to those parties from kindergarten age on up, and she and Nola and the rest had mingled with celebrities and socialites by the hundreds under the big white tents that were set up on the lawn. At the time, she had not realized how special those days were, or how fleeting. Now Martha, at sixty-eight, looked at least a decade older. Her hair, in a sunny blond shoulder-length bob for as long as Lisa could remember, was short and feathery now, and had turned white as snow. Her once round face was so thin that the delicate bones seemed to protrude through the skin. Thanks to the ravages of the disease that was slowly, cruelly taking her life, she weighed barely one hundred pounds. She couldn't stand or walk, and while she still had some strength left in her hands, she couldn't lift her arms or dress herself or get into bed or do much of anything at all without assistance. Her breathing was growing more difficult by the day, and her doctors had told Lisa that it would not be long before she would need to be on oxygen all the time, instead of just at night as she was now, while she slept in the hospital bed they'd had installed. But so far her bladder, bowel, and facial movements had been spared. Her speech was hesitant but only occasionally garbled, and her cognitive function was as clear as it had ever been. Which, in Lisa's mind, was both a blessing and a curse. Her mother was still there, completely herself and mentally wholly intact, inside her failing body. But she knew what was happening to her, and no matter how courageous a face she put on it, the fact that she did broke Lisa's heart.
    "I hear there 's trouble up at the Buchanan house," Robin announced as Lisa took her seat. Lisa made a wry face. There were no secrets in Woodford County. No doubt Andy or perhaps some passing neighbor had seen the police cars or heard something and had immediately called Robin to pass on the news or ask if she knew what was going on. "Bud Buchanan got carted off to jail."
    "What--did he do?" Martha asked with interest. Lisa held a spoonful of chicken soup to her mother's lips, and Martha opened her mouth and swallowed without ever taking her eyes off Robin. Robin had offered many times to sit with them while they ate and feed Martha so that Lisa and her mother could simply talk without Lisa having the bother of trying to get her mother to eat while she consumed her own meal, but Lisa refused, reserving this bit of her mother's care for herself. She was ever, achingly, conscious that they were running out of time.
    "Took a shot at a deputy who came to question him about a hit-and-run out on Travis Road. Drunk, of course. The police came, and they locked him up."
    "It's a wonder they didn't shoot him," Lisa exclaimed, feeding her mother another spoonful of soup. If he'd actually taken a shot at a deputy, the mean old man was in a world of trouble, and deservedly so. She wondered what Scott was doing about it. Something, she was sure.
    "The world couldn't get that lucky," Robin said darkly. Robin's take-no-prisoners personality, coupled with Bud Buchanan's obnoxiousness and proximity, meant they had warred for years.
    "Poor--Scott." Her mother shook her head when Lisa tried to get her to swallow another spoonful of soup. "You--eat. Have you seen him much--at work?"
    "I saw him today." Lisa obediently downed some of her own soup, then offered more to her mother, which this time was accepted. Keeping her mother's thoughts focused on events beyond the household and her illness was an object with Lisa. As long as Martha was interested in the outside world, Lisa felt, she would hang on. But she didn't want to burden her mother with anything that might