North of Normal

Chapter Two

"So you threw him out?" Parker's voice asked through the pops and crackles of the cell phone he was using half a world away. "Are you two done, Polls? I mean, seriously?"

"I don't know," Polly said, running a frustrated hand through her fiery red hair and flopping back onto the guest room bed. She'd decided after glancing at the master bed that she couldn't bring herself to change the sheets and sleep there tonight – not with the vision of Matthew and the housekeeper playing on repeat in her brain. "It sure feels like it, but it also feels like I have enough emotion and adrenaline to cut his balls off with a dull butter knife, so it's possible I'm not totally subjective right now."

Polly could hear Parker audibly gulp on the phone and laughed. "Ooh, sorry about that visual, twin," she apologized with a laugh in her voice.

"I'm going to suggest something, and I want you to not spontaneously freak out, okay?" Parker said evenly after he had taken a second to recover from his sister's startling visual. "Okay?"

"What could you possibly suggest that could freak me out any more today?" Polly replied, toeing off her stilettos and curling up against the down pillows beneath her head. "I mean, really?"

"I need you to go up north," Parker said. "Please," he added as an afterthought.

Polly bolted back up on the bed, ready to argue that under no circumstances was she going back north, but before she could open her mouth to object, Parker's voice came back on the line.

"Before you spontaneously freak out," Parker said, already imagining her reaction, "hear me out. Carl Kershaw's mother is going downhill, so he's made the decision to move back to Arizona to be with her, for however long she has left. We're in the middle of several construction projects, plus now the books are just sitting there empty with no one to coordinate anything, and we're facing a serious loss if we don't get it turned around. He's offered to let me buy him out, but I can't even get that organized, much less take bookings. I can't exactly handle things from here, Polls, I'm in a war zone," he said, putting special emphasis on the last two words in a bid for sympathy.

"Park, I'm in a marriage crisis zone," Polly mimicked, making him laugh. "And besides, I don't wanna."

"That's mature," Parker said. "Are you thirty seven, or are you five?"

"Shuddup."

"Oh, mature, Polls," Parker said with an almost audible grin. "Seriously – help me out. I can't exactly interview a new property manager from here, and besides... you could use a break, right? A change of scenery? A chance to get away from Matthew for a while to figure things out?"

"A change of scenery, sure. But I was thinking I could leave Santa Monica for a couple of days to go to Malibu, not some backwater filled with moose and Yoopers," Polly shot back. "Malibu is civilized."

"Malibu is artificial and boring. Up north will put hair on your chest," Parker said, and Polly groaned.

"Now I really don't wanna," she whined until Parker cut her off.

"Pull yourself together. Go up north, get your head on straight, work out some deals for me, check on the construction, and then move on with your life. There. Sorted. Stop whining."

Polly sighed, flopping back against the pillows again, idly twisting a curl of hair around her index finger. "If I do this..."

"When you do this..." Parker corrected before she continued.

"If I do this, how long do I have to stay?" Polly asked.

"Just until things are running smoothly and you've booked up the winter season. It's always the most lucrative, you know and we're always stupidly busy with the snowmobilers. After that, go back to LA for all I care. Hang with celebrities. Get skin cancer. Whatever."