Free Fatal Thaw by Dana Stabenow

"No.
    "But you got him." "Yes."
    There was a long pause. "At least you got him," Lottie said, still in that dull voice.
    "Lottie," Kate said, and stopped. How to say it? she thought, and tried again. "I wanted to stop by and see how you were."
    Kate floundered. "We grew up together. Lisa and I went through school together. I just thought-"
    "We've never been that close," Lottie pointed out. "Not since school, no." Kate bit her lip. "I'm sorry about Lisa, though. You lived together all your lives. It must hurt like hell."
    Lottie's face remained blank, a caricature china doll. For lack of something better to do, Kate leaned forward to pick up the photograph album she had removed from the chair. The gray cat had curled up on it, and her green eyes promised retribution for this second disruption of her morning nap. "May I?" Lottie said nothing, and Kate opened the album and began to leaf through it. "God, some of these are old. Look at these . . . what did they call them? Tintypes?"
    "Sepia prints," Lottie said. She rose and drifted over to stand behind Kate's shoulder.
    "Who's this hunk? Wow. He looks like Charles Findbergh."
    "My grandfather." Lottie paused, and then said almost reluctantly, "My mother's father."
    "Nice smile. You look kind of like him."
    "He was a prick," Lottie said flatly. "He was a drunk. My mother told me she eloped with my father because my father was the first person who ever said he loved her."
    Kate's hands stilled for a moment before turning the page. "Who's this with the hat? Thing must've weighed ten pounds with all those ruffles and bows."
    "My great-grandmother." Kate peeled away the transparency and looked at the back of the picture.
    She whistled. "This picture was taken in 1900." She squinted again at it. "You look kind of like her, too." She turned the page and laughed.
    "There must be six yards of fabric in that old nightgown, or whatever it is, and look at all those tiny buttons on his boots. That kid looks so clean he could squeak. Bet he stayed that way for about five minutes." Kate could feel Lottie leaning over her shoulder, and she paged forward. "These clothes look World War Two-ish; these must be your parents. Weird colors."
    "Tinted." "Right." Kate flipped through more pages, and slowed down. "Lisa?"
    "Yes. " Kate frowned a little. "Where is she? I don't recognize the place."
    A pause. "The first five summers of our lives we spent out at the cannery on Mummy Island."
    Kate looked again and couldn't help smiling. "Lisa sure didn't like clothes much, did she?"
    "No." A pause. "The cannery superintendent was always calling Mom to tell him Lisa had her clothes off again and was running around the dock naked."
    Kate kept her eyes fixed on the page. "And where are you?"
    "Over there. In back and to the left." "With your clothes on."
    Somehow the joke fell flat. "Yes."
    Kate's finger ran down to the bottom of the page. "Your mother and father. That's you on your father's lap?" "Yes. One of the few, times he could bear to touch his fat, dumb kid."
    Kate turned the page and said with relief, "School pictures I Were we ever really that young?"
    The pictures of the two sisters, arranged chronologically and side by side, showed a maturing process far kinder to the younger sister than to the elder. Lisa ripened. Lottie weathered. Lisa grew from a plump baby cuteness to a girlish prettiness to real beauty. Lottie just grew, taller and wider. Lisa was slender, and there was a lissome quality to her form, in the way her golden scarf of hair lay on her shoulders, in the bend of her long, slender neck, in the graceful disposal of her arms, that made her look as if she were moving even as she posed for a still picture. Lottie in her pictures seemed rooted, immobile, static, her body massive and graceless. Lisa's eyes sparkled, her cheeks dimpled, her smile was wide and filled with a secret glee that made one wonder what was so amusing.
    Kate remembered the effect to be even more irritating in