Free The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones Page B

bit like those Victorian conch cottages you find down in the Keys.”
    â€œAnd that would count for something if it were in the Keys. But here? It just looks…tired.” Jo withdrew the tape measure and let it snap back in place again. Her mouth twitched to one side then the other. “Hardly an ideal spot for a home or a vacation getaway.”
    â€œWell, then it’s the ideal spot for me, because I’m tired of standing out here. Make with the key so we can go inside and I can prop my foot up and start ordering you around.”
    â€œKey? I don’t have the key.”
    â€œWhat do you mean you don’t have the key? You were the one who packed up Mom’s things after she sold the condo.” And took a cut of the Realtor’s fee for doing it. Kate had never faulted her sister for that, thinking that anyone who had held open houses and contract negotiations with their mom had earned every penny she got. But still, now, with sensation slowly returning to her foot and her patience waning, all she could think about was how Jo tended to look out for herself first and everyone else…never. “You should have gotten the key. Where do you think it is?”
    Jo gathered the bags she had just unloaded, slinging them over her shoulders, her arms and filling both hands. “It’s probably in a box in that storage unit I shoved everything in.”
    â€œStorage unit? Shoved? I thought you sifted through every knickknack and…paddy-whack, sorted it all out, bagged and boxed and organized…”
    â€œDid I say I did all that?” She looked off at the cottage, her expression more inquisitive than evasive.
    No, of course she hadn’t said it. Kate had just assumed it. It was what she would have done on the occasion of her mother’s latest big adventure, if Kate hadn’t been so preoccupied with the disasters of her own life. In theory.
    In reality, she’d probably have done anything to avoid dealing with it. Instead of the key being in a storage unit where their mother could retrieve it, under Scat-Kat Kate’s care, it would probably have been moldering in a landfill.
    Thunk.
    Thunk.
    Thump. Bump.
    Thwack.
    One by one, Jo divested herself of the luggage.
    Kate exhaled and leaned on her cane. The tip sank into the rich damp soil beneath an island of thick, lush grass. “What now, then?”
    â€œWe call a locksmith.” Jo already had her sleek cell phone in one hand, pressing numbers with her thumb even as she spoke.
    â€œYou have a number of a locksmith in Santa Sofia, Florida, in your cell-phone contact list?”
    â€œNo, but I have one in Atlanta and I presume they have connections down here.”
    â€œYou are very good at your job,” Kate noted when her sister finished up the series of calls that had someone winging their way to the rescue.
    â€œThank you.” Jo tipped her head and her gorgeous blond hair—hair she hadn’t had when she’d showed up at the E.R. five days earlier—went tumbling over her shoulder.
    â€œHow long?” Kate asked.
    â€œHow long have I been good at my job?” She seemed a bit more offended than a woman wearing someone else’s hair should have been.
    Kate chuckled. “No, how long until the locksmith shows up?”
    â€œOh. The locksmith.” Jo nodded and looked down. She took a moment to shuffle her feet over some bits of crumbling concrete in the drive. While she didn’t have on the three-hundred-dollar pair of pumps she’d worn two days earlier, the strappy beaded sandals with glitter and curved acrylic heels probably cost more than Kate had spent on her whole wardrobe of sensible, arch-supported doctor-approved—and she knew because she was that doctor—shoes.
    Kate nudged the side of Jo’s shoe near the strap lacing over her hot-pink pedicured toenails with her quickly getting grubby purple cast. She managed to wriggle her own ashen toes in