Leading Pip back toward the lobby, Kimmie heard her sister’s abrasive giggle even before she stepped into the waiting room. What was Meg doing? Didn’t she know how rude it was to talk that loudly on the phone in a public area?
Except that Meg wasn’t on the phone.
Her sister stood and smiled brilliantly when Kimmie stepped forward. “So,” Meg said, drumming her perfectly shaped, long fingernails on Taylor’s shoulder, “you’re back. Did the doctor give you the answers you wanted?”
Kimmie fought back an unjustified wave of jealousy when she saw her sister with Taylor. “Pip’s got strep.” She shot a haughty glance at Meg.
“Poor little guy.” Taylor reached out and ran his fingers gently through Pip’s hair.
“Well, you ready to go?” Meg adjusted the strap of her handbag and glanced at the clock hanging above the pharmacy window.
“No,” Kimmie answered, “I’ve got to wait for Pip’s medicine.”
Meg sat back down next to Taylor and bumped her shoulder against his. “I guess it’s a busy day at the pharmacy then, isn’t it?”
“I’m waiting to get a prescription filled too,” he explained. He patted the empty chair next to him. “Have a seat.”
Kimmie held up the piece of paper Tabitha had given her. “I think I need to drop this off first.” She would never admit it in front of her sister, but she was glad someone was here who knew how to use a pharmacy. She found herself wondering what kind of medicine someone as strong and apparently healthy as Taylor needed and fought down another surge of jealousy as she realized that her sister was so nosy that it was probably the very first question she’d asked him.
Taylor showed her where to drop off Pip’s prescription, and then she sat down next to him, waiting. Hadn’t Meg said she wanted to make phone calls from the car?
“So,” her sister crowed in her obnoxious, singsong voice that was far too loud, “Taylor and I have been talking all about the East Coast.”
“Oh yeah?” Kimmie asked. “You have family there or something?”
Meg let out a giggle. “That’s where he’s from, silly.” At least she didn’t revert back to her favorite childhood taunt by adding don’t you remember, but her tone and the expression on her face said the exact same thing.
“I worked on a police force in Massachusetts, but the suburbs felt claustrophobic.”
“That’s why you moved to Alaska?” Kimmie asked.
Meg nudged him again. “That wasn’t the only reason.” She batted her eyes as if fleas were threatening to land on her eyeballs.
Taylor looked pensive. “Well, that was one of the reasons.”
Kimmie waited for more, hating to imagine there were things about Taylor’s life her sister knew that she didn’t. She might have asked him for further details, but a woman in a lab coat called his name, and he stood up to walk to the counter.
“What kind of medicine do you think he’s on?” Meg whispered as soon as his back was turned.
Meg wasn’t talking nearly as quietly as she probably thought, but as humiliating as her question was, Kimmie was simultaneously grateful to learn that Taylor hadn’t told her sister everything.
Holding a paper bag with a receipt stapled to the top, Taylor gave a little wave. “It was nice running into you,” he said, and this time Kimmie was certain all his attention was focused on Meg. It was just like her sister to monopolize the spotlight, just like she always had.
Meg wiggled her fingers in a playful goodbye, but Kimmie grimaced at the sound of her sister’s fake fingernails clanking against each other.
She watched Taylor step toward the exit, still wondering what he had in his paper bag. “See you tonight,” she mumbled.
As soon as he was out of the lobby, Meg elbowed her in the side. “You’re lucky I’m married, or I would totally be all over that.”
Kimmie rolled her eyes. With as shamelessly as Meg acted, nobody would suspect she was married if it weren’t for that huge rock on her left hand.
“You really should try to find out what kind of pills he’s on,” Meg whispered.
Kimmie crossed her arms and waited for Pip’s medicine.