“You’re nuts!” Carol told her. “Absolutely nuts.”
Vicki simply grinned impishly.
“I love you and all, sis, but do you really think you’re making a wise move here by getting involved with an inmate?”
“I love her, Carol, and she loves me.”
“Oh, and has she told you that?”
“Yes,” she lied. It was ok, for she believed she would be telling her that for real very soon enough.
“But you guys haven’t even known each other for two weeks,” Carol protested.
“Come on, be happy for me, will you?”
“It’s not that I’m not happy for you, Vic, I’m just a little worried is all.”
“Well, you know what they say; when it’s right, it’s right and you know it right away.”
“I hope it’s right, and if it is, then yes, I’m happy for you.”
Vicki looked at her younger sister and smiled with gratitude. As straight as Carol was, the two had always been able to share each other’s crushes and relationships without discomfort or judgment.
Looking at the two of them side by side, one would never guess them to be sisters with Vicki tall, dark, and slim while Carol was short, plump, and blond. Perhaps that was because they weren’t. At least not literally. After a year and a half of trying to no avail to have kids of their own, their parents adopted Carol, then were quite surprised a couple of years later to learn of Vicki’s conception, followed by Brandon’s a few years after that.
“What’s she like?” Carol asked after the two spent a few minutes lost in her own thoughts.
“She’s sweet. Such a cutie, too. She stands out from the others. She appears to be much more intelligent and mature.”
“Just be careful, Vicki,” Carol warned.
“I checked out her and her family. Except for this little offense, which I truly believe was done out of desperateness and with her kids in mind, her and the family’s squeaky clean.”
“She’s still a criminal with two kids and a deadbeat dad.”
Vicki felt her irritation growing. “Oh, come off it, Carol. We’ve gotten pulled over for speeding a few times in our lives. Does that make us criminals?”
“We didn’t go to jail for it,” Carol pointed out.
“Neither did we when we stuck that poor little mouse in Mr. Simpson’s mailbox when we were teenagers,” Vicki reminded her with another impish grin. “That was quite a federal offense as far as I know.”
Not even Carol could help but giggle over that one as she remembered what the kids had considered to be the neighborhood geek. Nobody had liked the old man up until he had gone belly-up from a heart attack. The geek had lived alone, and not only was he a geek, but he wasn’t very nice, either. He threatened to shoot the people’s cat who lived behind him for knocking up his own cat that he should’ve had spayed. He threw a screaming fit at a ten-year-old boy who had ridden his bike over a corner of his front yard, threatening to have his parents sued for not disciplining the child. He often made the neighbors afraid to even breathe, thus earning himself one prank after another from the neighborhood kids and sometimes even the adults as well. One woman wanted to slap him silly. Her husband had assured her that he’d gladly do it for her, but he never got the chance, for he was dead shortly afterward, much more to people’s relief than empathy.
“Ok, sis. You have my blessings on this one even if you do seem uncharacteristically obsessed with the girl,” Carol told her.
Vicki smiled.
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