Well, she'd shown Cindy Gallamore, hadn't she? She wondered what old Cindy was doing now. Probably giving herself home perms and changing diapers in one of these dismal little cracker boxes while Tess McPhail's latest number-one country hit wafted from the radio behind the piles of dirty dishes on Cindy's kitchen cupboard.
Tess reran the tape of "Tarnished Gold" one last time, listening with a critical ear. Overall, she liked it. Liked it a lot, with the exception of one single harmony note that continued to bother her after listening to the cut perhaps fifty or sixty times during her drive up.
She passed Judy and Ed's house on Thirteenth Street. The garage door was up and a car was visible inside, but Tess went on singing harmony with herself and gave the place little more than a hard-edged glance. Judy and her damned peremptory summons.
"Momma's got to have surgery on her other hip and this time you're taking care of her," Judy had said.
What would Judy know about the demands of a major career? All she'd ever done was run a beauty shop. Why, she hadn't a glimmer of what it meant to be pulled away from your work midway through recording an album that a whole record label was planning to release on a date that had been set more than a year ago.
But Judy was jealous, always had been, and throwing her weight around was how she got even.
The last thing Judy had said on the phone was, "You're going to be here, Tess, and don't try to get out of it!"
Then there was Tess's middle sister, Renee, on the other side of town, whose daughter, Rachel, was getting married in four weeks. It was understandable that Renee had plenty to do during these last few weeks before the wedding, but couldn't they have scheduled it and the surgery a little further apart? After all, Mom had known she needed this second hip replacement ever since she'd had the first one two years ago.