Million Dollar Dilemma. Judy Baer

      I imagined my perpetually pleasant, five-foot-one-inch sister leaning conspiratorially into the phone, her bobbed hair swinging over her round cheeks and her brown eyes sparkling. I’m the “redheaded stepchild” of my family—everyone else has plank-straight hair that’s a lovely traditional shade of brown, and eyes to match. I, on the other hand, look as if I was sired by Henry VIII of England and birthed by Pippi Long-stocking, with my riot of russet curls and eyes the color of, according to my dad, warm caramel.

      Jane is envious of my porcelain skin and oval face. I figure the accursed ginger-colored freckles across the bridge of my nose make us even in the skin department. We both, however, have smiles with teeth straight and even as a mile’s worth of fence posts across the South Dakota prairie.

      “I didn’t want your boss to think you took personal calls during working hours. Proverbs 15:3, you know.”

      The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Jane and I had listened so often to our grandfather’s sermons and pithy homilies that as kids we’d started referring to our own life experiences by book, chapter and verse. Just the mention of Proverbs 12:24 can make me shorten my coffee break and get back to work.

      Hard workers will become leaders. But those who are lazy will be slaves.

      “Are you taking Grandma home to Simms this weekend, Cassia? I forgot a sweater there on my last trip. I’d like you to pick it up if you go.”

      No way. I’d just escaped from Simms, and had no immediate desire to go back. “There’s nothing to do there except to check the basement for mice and kick the furnace. Grandma Mattie isn’t interested in the long trip, and the neighbors are looking after things. I thought we’d wait until Mom and Dad come for a visit.”

      Their vacation is months from now.

      “What about Ken? Don’t you want to see him?”

      Talking to my sister on the phone is very frustrating. I prefer to do it in person so she can see me glaring menacingly at her. Jane’s a busybody, pure and simple. “I’ve said it a dozen times. I’m not seeing Ken anymore.”

      “Does he know that?”

      “I’ve told him often enough. Of course, I’ve told you a number of times, too, and you keep bringing up the subject.”

      “Touchy, touchy. Did I hit a nerve?”

      “I only have one nerve left and you’re on it. You know perfectly well that Ken and I were just…convenient. Two single people in a small town. We were invited to the same parties so often that someone decided we were a couple, that’s all.” Unfortunately no one in Simms believed that we were only friends, not even Ken.

      “Maybe that’s true for you, but I think Ken has a slightly different perspective.”

      “It doesn’t matter. Ken and I are done.”

      “Just checking,” Jane said infuriatingly. “I’m glad to hear you’re hanging tough with him. He’d have already marched you down the aisle if he had his way.”

      “I know. The story of my life. I never find my Mr. Right, but I have an entire army of Mr. Slightly Wrongs beating on my door. Ken is waiting for me to get lonely in the big city, realize what a ‘good thing’ I’ve got in him and come running back to Simms to marry him.”

      “And pigs will fly!” Jane knows full well my attitude about the subject, but feels it’s her sisterly duty to check my emotional temperature once in a while. She never realizes how many times she’s the one responsible for raising it into the danger zone.

      “I suppose it wasn’t quite that bad…”

      “Hah! Don’t try to pretend with me, Cassia. You only went to Simms because Gramps needed a temporary church secretary. Three months, tops, he told you. If you’d known you’d have to put your master’s degree on hold and quit your job at the preschool to help Grandma care for him for eighteen months, you might not have been quite so willing to help out.”

      “No one knew how ill he was, Jane, least of all Gramps. None of us had any idea that Grandma Mattie and I would be taking care of him until he died.”

      “Of course not, but I’ll bet if Ken offered you a million dollars, a mansion overlooking the James River and a fleet of servants, you wouldn’t go back now.”

      Actually, he had offered me that. I’d just never mentioned it to Jane because I didn’t take him up on his proposal.

      “Ben and Mattie needed me, that’s all that’s important. Besides, I’m not much interested in money. You know that. All Winslow and I need is food and shelter.” I glanced at Stella’s desk. And enough money to buy gifts for my coworkers.

      “Oh, Cassia. You’d be contented in a tree house if you thought that was what God wanted for you. You’re the least materialistic human being on the planet.”

      I propped the phone beneath my chin and removed the clip from my hair. I felt it cascade down my back in ringlets like cooped-up children let out for recess, and ran my fingers through my curls with relief.

      “No one in our grandfather’s house dared to be acquisitive. Jane, you and I were the only two children in school who were afraid of our own allowance.”

      “Speak for yourself. I, at least, could suppress my guilt and spend mine, guilty as it made me feel. You’d put yours in the offering plate on Sunday morning. I thought you were nuts.”

      “Psalms 37:16.”

      It is better to be godly and have little than to be evil and possess much.

      “Having money doesn’t make you evil, silly.”

      “Gramps did warn us a time or two about the dangers of storing up one’s treasures on earth, didn’t he?”

      “I doubt he was thinking of his two scrawny, scabby-kneed granddaughters.”

      “All I know is that I don’t want too much cash. It’s more responsibility than I care to have. Besides, I don’t need much.”

      I glanced at my watch. “Listen, I have to go. Winslow is probably crossing his legs and dancing by the front door by now. Talk later?”

      Silly question. Jane is as chatty as I can be reserved. It’s a wonder that I still have ears—you’d think she would have talked them off by now.

      “Okay. Hug Grandma Mattie for me when you see her. Oh, by the way, have you met your neighbors yet?”

      “Slowly. Listen, I have to go. Bye.”

      Hanging up on Jane made me feel both guilty and relieved. I don’t want to admit that I haven’t met a single neighbor in the building she’d assured me was probably full of people my age and very friendly. According to Jane, apartment living would be a veritable mine of opportunities to expand my social life. Of course, the last time she lived in an apartment, she was in college.

      As far as I’ve gathered from the landlord, most of the residents are elderly or hold night jobs. The apartment below mine, supposedly occupied by someone under sixty, is closed up tight.

      The dull mechanical drone of the dial tone hummed in my ear.

      Social life. What a novel concept. I’ll have to go right out and get myself one. Of course, at this point, I have to admit, any old life would do—they all have to be more exciting than mine.

      CHAPTER 2

      Grocery stores are the most amazing things, like Disneyland for the hungry and fresh-food deprived. In Simms an apple, banana or orange is exotic, but here…

      I felt my control slipping in the fresh produce section and didn’t pull myself together until dairy loomed ahead. Even there I felt a tingle over the choices—milk for the lactose intolerant, for the dairy intolerant…next there’d be