Free Autumn Dreams by Gayle Roper

Sherri got older, she pulled a white chair so close to the fence that she sat with her feet propped on the bottom rail each evening, watching the lights blink on in the distance.
    “It’s a fairyland,” she said. “Quick and bright and free of tarnish. Just like people should be.”
    Tuck never ceased to marvel at his stepsister’s idealism. “People are like the real L.A., Sherri. Ugly. Dark. Black with tarnish. The lights are just illusion.”
    She shook her head, her rose-colored glasses firmly in place. “I like my view better.”
    Idiot girl. Her chair wasn’t there anymore, of course. Patsi had made the gardener put it away.
    “I can’t stand to look at it, all empty and forlorn,” she said,tears streaming down her cheeks. That was back when all she did was cry.
    Now all she did was stare. And pray. The praying gave him the willies worse than the staring.
    Tuck threw himself down on the ground so his head peered over the edge of the drop. It was a long way down to the rocks clustered at the base of the raw dirt cliff. It fascinated him to look down there and wonder what it would feel like to fall. Sometimes he thought that since the cliff was undercut so badly, making a mildly curved C, all he had to do was lie here long enough, and the dirt beneath him would give way. All over California, cliffs, houses, and occasionally people were sliding down hillsides in the rain. Why not him?
    He reached to his right and grabbed a large pebble that sat in the untended area this side of the fence. He stretched his hand out over the abyss and dropped the stone. It plunged straight down until it hit the vertical wall where the cliff curved back out. The stone made a great bounce before it hit the wall again and began rolling, rolling until it hit the rocks.
    “Tucker, get back here.”
    He turned and saw his father standing at the fence. The man was trim from all his time playing racquetball, and his jawline was still taut though he, like Patsi, was in his fifties. Even in jeans and a black t-shirt, he looked like money, but the money didn’t hide his tension. His knuckles were white where he gripped the top rail.
    “You know how Patsi worries about someone falling.”
    Tuck climbed to his feet, looking back at Patsi on the patio. She stared vacantly, aware of nothing. “She doesn’t look worried to me, Dad.” Though he always thought of his father as Hank, he took care to call him Dad. “At least she’s not worried about me.”
    His father turned and glanced back at his wife. As he did so, Tuck was struck by the amount of white hair Hank suddenly had. Tuck frowned. The idea of his father being old was somehow unsettling. Not that he and Hank had a relationship or anything. It was the fact that Hank was the money machine, and Tuck didn’t want to lose access to his personal golden goose.
    Or share.
    He lowered his head so Hank couldn’t read his face.
    Wherever Sherri is, she’d better be dead
.

Seven
    C ASS PULLED TWO pans of her made-from-scratch sticky buns from the oven and upended them on a wire rack to cool a bit. She slid the three quiche Lorraines she had baked earlier that morning into the oven to rewarm. The bran muffins and cranberry-orange bread went into the microwave to warm. Into her large blender she poured orange juice and two bananas and hit frappé.
    Brenna walked into the kitchen through the swinging door that opened onto the dining porch just as Cass poured the beverage into a cut glass pitcher.
    “I put the granola, yogurt, and fresh fruit on the serving hutch,” she said. “The coffee’s ready, and the tea water is hot. I’ve got the basket of herbal and regular teas all arranged. There’s a cream pitcher, sugar, Equal, and Sweet’N Low on each table. I pulled a couple of daisies from a couple of the tables’ bouquets because they were looking a bit droopy. Did I forget anything?”
    “Milk, real cream, and the artificial creamers?”
    Brenna turned from the refrigerator with a