"My Perfectly Imperfect Life is a deeply emotional family drama... There is a lot of humor in this tale...add(ing) to a wonderful, affecting character study." - The Reader's Guild

Austin, Texas
Spring, 1989

The scent of roses and prime rib filled the candle-lit country club dining room; the smell of my salvation. I had waited my entire life for this night. Not only did I love Blaine, he was my escape route from Coopersville. From my past. He would make me a Medford. A somebody. Part of a decent, respectable family. One day, we would have children. They would hold their heads high and be proud of their name. They would never hesitate to bring friends to our home.

Blaine squeezed my fingers beneath the crisp, white tablecloth. Then, releasing my hand, he tapped his fork against a crystal wineglass. Pushing away from the table, he stood. Everyone fell silent.

“Mom and Dad…Audra.” He shifted his attention from his parents and sister to our small group of guests. “Thanks, everyone, for coming tonight to celebrate my passing the bar exam. Dad, you can finally exhale that breath you’ve been holding. Good thing, too. You’re turning blue.”

I drank in the titters of laughter like champagne bubbles; they made me just as giddy. When Blaine turned to me, I stood, too.

“But we have something even better to celebrate.” He took my hand. “Last week, I asked Dinah to marry me, and she accepted.”

The room erupted with words of congratulations from our friends, but the Medfords’ silence rolled over me like a boulder, squashing my happiness.

Paige Medford’s thin smile never wavered as she exchanged a glance with her daughter that told me more than words ever could.

Blaine’s father cleared his throat, his eye twitching above a forced grin. “That’s wonderful, Son. We’re so pleased, Dinah.”

Dropping my hand and frowning, Blaine said, “Mother?”

Mrs. Medford glanced from him, to our silent guests, to me. “We are pleased. Just taken off guard. Shouldn’t your family be here for this occasion? Your sister? Your aunt? We’ve never even met them.”

The first time I visited Blaine’s family, I said my parents were dead, that I wasn’t close to my sister or my aunt. All true. My mother and father might have been living and breathing somewhere on the planet but, to me, they were dead and had been for fifteen years. And since leaving home for college at the age of eighteen, I rarely saw Aunt Maeve or Dottie. “They couldn’t come,” I said quickly. “My aunt isn’t well.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” The flickering candles on the table failed to soften Mrs. Medford’s stare. “And where did you tell me they live?”

“Coopersville. It’s a small town north of Amarillo.”

"And your sister?”

“She has finals. She’s at Texas Tech finishing her sophomore year.”

Which wasn’t true, at all. My younger sister had never set foot in a college classroom.

Eyes bored into me. The judgmental eyes of Blaine’s family. The pitying eyes of our friends. Why wouldn’t Blaine say anything? He watched his parents closely, his face taut and worried, the sparkle of excitement he had worn all evening extinguished.

Blaine’s father raised his wine glass. “This calls for a toast.”

I reached for my glass but stopped short of lifting it when a commotion sounded beyond the doorway.

“Miss!” the waiter called out. “You can’t go in there. It’s a private party.”

“Get your hands off me, asshole. I can do whatever the hell I want. I’m about to be a part of this snooty family.”

The familiar slurred smoke-and-velvet voice shot my heart toward the ceiling then dropped it to the floor. Turning, I stepped away from the table. Gasps and whispers drifted from behind me. The room swayed. The chandelier’s lights blurred. The draperies bled crimson. Every sound seemed too loud, distorted.

One step ahead of the frantic waiter, Dottie burst into the room wearing a tube top, short flared skirt, fishnet tights cut off at mid-calf, and more beads and bangles than Madonna. Shoulder-length, over-bleached and permed hair formed a wild halo around her face. She took in the scene with bleary, mascara-coated eyes, her full cherry-red lips pursed, as if for a kiss.

Planting one hand on an outthrust hip, Dottie tilted her head and sneered, “Well, well, well. Look at Aunt Maeve’s little lemon drop now. You did good for yourself, Dinah. This is quite a step up from the trailer park. Just what you’ve always wanted.” She moved nearer to me on unsteady legs, and I almost gagged on the fog of alcohol and tobacco fumes surrounding her.

“Dottie, please…”

Pausing in front of Blaine, Dottie sized him up: his styled sandy hair, the conservative tie, the dark suit, the polished, tasseled shoes. She fanned her face. “Nice, Dinah. So this must be my future-brother-in-law.” Linking her arm through his, she pressed closer to Blaine’s side, pecked his cheek, purred, “Welcome to the family, good-lookin’.”

Blaine flinched. The red imprint of Dottie’s lips stained the space beside his mouth. Glaring at me, he breathed, “Do something about her, or I will.”

“Why are you here?” I hissed, grabbing her arm.

“Hey! Back off.” Dottie laughed and jerked away. “You don’t think I’d miss my big sister’s engagement party, do you?”

“You weren’t invited.”

“That’s right, I wasn’t.” The tone of her voice hardened along with her eyes. “Neither was Aunt Maeve. You didn’t even tell her. Why not just slap her in the face? That’s what it felt like when she heard your big news from the mailman.”

Kay’s father. I should never have confided in my best friend from back home. I glanced over my shoulder at Blaine’s humiliated eyes. Behind him, his family and friends stared at Dottie, their faces masks of disgust.

“You think you’re better than us.” Dottie dug the spiked heels of her ankle boots into the thick carpet as I tried to drag her toward the door. “You’ve always thought so. But you’re not.” She looked back at the table and yelled, “She’s not. She’s plain old Dinah Dewberry from Ponderosa Mobile Home Park in Coopersville. No college degree or rich husband’s gonna change that.”

Vibrating with humiliation and rage, I shoved my sister into the hallway and stepped out beside her.

Dottie fell back against the wall, her bravado crumbling. With a sob, she clutched her stomach and lifted hazy eyes to mine. “I’m sorry, Di…I—”

“No.” Shaking my head, I lifted a hand to stop Dottie’s words. “I won’t accept your apology. Not this time.”

“I’m gonna be sick. I need you.”

“You need me too much. You always have. I’m through taking care of you, do you understand? I’m through covering for you and bailing you out of trouble every time you screw up. I don’t care what happens to you anymore. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not sisters.”

Dottie swiped at her eyes with a trembling hand, smearing mascara across her cheek. “You stopped being my sister a long time ago,” she whispered. Pushing away from the wall, she stumbled down the hallway past the waiter and a staring string of the country club’s staff.

Choking on tears, I turned and walked in the opposite direction, my chin lifted, my posture erect. When I reached the emergency exit, I shoved through it, tripping an alarm, then ran into the night.

I didn’t look back.