Free For the Love of Family by Kathleen O`Brien

me, I know your father. If he finds out that your mother has been to the hospital, God only knows what he’ll do. Which may be what your mother is after.”
    “What? You think she’d use your father to…”
    But he wasn’t listening. He leaned forward, and in spite of herself Belle instinctively drew back.
    “I haven’t a clue what she’d do. Listen, Belle. I don’t have anything against you or your mother. I assume you’ve been as blindsided by all this as we have. But my father and I don’t need to get caught in the middle of whatever is going on between your parents. Right now I can’t afford to let anyone slow his recovery.”
    His expression had grown dark, as if he grappled with some emotion too intense to share. “I’m sorry to be rude, Belle, but I’d like you to talk to her. I’d like you to make sure she doesn’t come again.”
     
    L ATER THAT NIGHT , while her best friend, Pandora, drowsed with her baby in the armchair, offering occasional lazy comments, Belle tried on every dress she owned and tried not to panic.
    But panic was definitely nibbling at the edges of her psyche. Her first formal staff meeting at Diamante was tomorrow. Matt Malone presided over the sessions, and George had warned her that she’d be expected to have ideas for the upcoming product launch.
    She’d been racking her brain all afternoon. Now she was racking her closet. After her missteps today she had an awful lot to prove.
    And very little to prove it with. She hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas to suggest, and the closet…
    Journalists simply didn’t have the same dress code as public relations people. She had one decent suit, and Matt had already seen her in it twice. Even if it hadn’t been in an airtight bag ready to go to the dry cleaners, she couldn’t have worn it again.
    She held up the last of her options, a black sweaterdress that fit well and looked fairly stylish. She caught Pandora’s eye in the mirror. “Maybe?”
    “Maybe if you were going to a funeral.” Her friend’s chuckle was soft, but the sleeping baby sprawled out across her chest stirred. Pandora put her hand on little Mary Isabella Anderson’s back, and the baby calmed instantly.
    “Sorry,” she continued in a softer voice. “But bo-ring. Don’t you own anything that says ‘watch out, world, here I come!’?”
    Belle tossed the sweaterdress onto the bed, along with all the other rejected outfits. “My bikini, maybe. Want me to wear that?”
    Pandora, whose own wardrobe was always fabulously flamboyant, sighed. She propped her feet on the edge of the bed and studied her rhinestone-encrusted sandals thoughtfully. “Maybe I have something at the theater that would—”
    “No.” Belle held up a warning palm. Pandora taught drama to high schoolers, and she was famous for having the most elaborate costume department in the entire San Francisco public-school system. “Don’t even think about it, Dorrie.”
    Her friend scowled, ready to argue, but then her face relaxed into a smile. “Oh, right. That didn’t work out so great last time, did it? Yeah, you’d better not go the costume route. You wouldn’t want Zorro…I mean, your boss , falling asleep right in the middle of the meeting.”
    Ignoring the jibe, Belle dropped onto the vanity chair and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked tired, herface too pale and her eyes shadowed. It wasn’t just the job, though of course that didn’t help.
    These days, almost everything seemed to be going wrong.
    The breakup with David, the newspaper layoffs, the money problems that just wouldn’t quit. Her father’s temper, the strangely hostile meeting with her new cousin, and now this weird news that her mother was acting out of character.
    A lot of seemingly unconnected bad karma. But sometimes Belle thought all the ripples could be traced back to the one heavy stone that had been dropped into their lives.
    It had all begun the night her adored grandmother died. Or, to be