Chasing Serenity (River Rain 1)

And I’d done my due diligence, so I knew Sasha was hanging in Phoenix with some friends.

The coast was clear.

I let Bowie’s beautiful piece of this earth with his sprawling house and the mountain backdrop with the big lake start to penetrate as I parked in front.

I got out, let myself in, and over the cacophony of dogs racing to me to say hello (Bowie had three, Shasta, a husky, Rocco, a tripod silver receiver, and Killer, a peekapoo), with forced joviality, I called, “Bonjour, I’ve arrived!”

I gave love to Shasta and Rocco but scooped Killer up into my arms as I walked through Bowie’s massive foyer and into his equally massive great room, looked right, toward the kitchen, and saw Bowie and Mom in it, doing as they often did, cooking together.

I did not stop to consider what they might be cooking, seeing as it was a couple of hours until dinner time.

I didn’t do this because Sasha was on a stool at the island.

Damn it.

For a moment I had hope. Hope that Mom told her I was up from Phoenix, so she’d returned in order to chat matters through with me.

Although she could dig into things, Sasha was normally mellow, and she generally hated conflict. She also tended not to hold grudges, had her piques, then got over them.

Nevertheless, upon sight of me, her eyes narrowed, and her lip curled.

Well, that hope was dashed.

As I approached, I ignored my sister and asked the room at large, “How’s my beloved family?”

“Good, darling, that’s a cute outfit,” Mom said, coming my way.

She gave me a double cheek kiss when she arrived, gave Killer a head scratch then headed back into the kitchen and Bowie was there.

Both Killer and I got a big hug and Bowie said in my ear during it, “Martini?”

When he slightly pulled away, I smiled up at him and replied, “Gasping.”

His lips twitched, he released me and muttered, “On it.”

I moved to stand at the island and greeted, “Sasha.”

She returned the coldness with, “Chloe.”

My mother was a renowned actress.

She was also a fantastic mother.

Thus, she did not miss this stiltedness.

Bowie was relatively new to our lives.

But he was a father.

Thus, he didn’t miss it either.

They exchanged a glance.

“Everything okay with you guys?” Mom asked.

“Peachy,” I lied.

“Liar,” Sasha said under her breath.

I pulled up the Death Stare and aimed it at my sister.

Mom turned from whatever she was doing at the stove, and Bowie twisted away from the martini he was preparing to mix, both aiming their attention toward the island.

“What’s going on?” Mom demanded.

“Nothing,” I declared. “We’re having a slight tiff. Détente for this lovely dinner with Mom and Bowie, though.”

“Always the drama,” Sasha said with a verbal roll of her eyes.

“How about we not make our issue Mom and Bowie’s, hmm?” I suggested to her.

“What issue?” Mom pushed.

“It’s nothing,” I repeated.

“Says you,” Sasha stated.

I sent the Death Stare her way again. “Should I leave?”

Like she had claim to Bowie’s house, she replied, “That’d be good.”

“Sasha,” Mom snapped.

Sasha turned her attention to our mother. “She’s bossy and she thinks she knows everything. She’s always been that way, it’s never been fun, we’ve always hated it. But Matt and I are grown up now and it’s way getting old.”

It took a lot to bite my lip and not float a retort to her “grown up” comment, considering the woman two feet from me was twenty, nearly twenty-one, jobless, aimless and living off her trust fund.

That was, she was doing that when she wasn’t mooching off her father, her mother or her mother’s fiancé.

“Chloe, what now?” Mom sighed.

And at that, I turned my stare to her, not the Death Stare, a stunned one.

Mom didn’t miss that either and noted, “You do bring a lot of drama. This isn’t something you don’t know about yourself.”

“You know, maybe I should go,” I returned.

“Honey, no,” Bowie entered the conversation, and his eyes on me were not accusatory. They were sharp and concerned. “Are you okay?”

No.

I was not.

“I’ve had a long day and I don’t need this,” I stated honestly.

“Again, drama,” Sasha mumbled.

All right.

Enough.

Instead of saying to my sister, Actually, I have a job I work fifty plus hours a week. And I’m volunteering my time to do something for the social outreach arm of Bowie’s store. So I’ve been hiking all day as only part of my efforts to prepare a presentation for that project. We won’t get into the emotional situation it is with Judge that I’ve had to ride all day. In other words, it’s not drama. I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. But let’s talk about what you’ve done this week, this month, and, say, the past two years.

I wanted to say that.

But even if I was angry at her, I loved her, and because now was not the time to broach that, I didn’t.