Hung Out to Die Read Online Free Page B

hypochondriac, too, but even hypochondriacs can get sick for real, Josie. He only lived a few weeks after about the thirtieth time my mama called me to say his doctor told him he didn’t have long to live.” Now she sniffled, too. “Always regretted not seeing him.”
    â€œOh, you two, please,” I said. “What is it about the Thanksgiving holiday and families and the guilties?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Cherry said. “But it sure gets to me every year when I go home for dinner and Mama says at the end of the blessing, ‘and God bless all our loved ones gone before us, especially Uncle Bubba, who no one believed was sick. Amen.’”
    â€œAnd it’s working me up that Mamaw said to me just last week when I was over to her house to fix a squeaky door. ‘Now Sally,’ she says, ‘there’s something I need to tell Josie and I know you’re the only one who can get her to come to your poor old sick Mamaw’s for Thanksgiving . . .’”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    Sally glared at me. “Josie, aren’t you the least little bit curious about what Mamaw wants?”
    â€œNo,” I said, lying. But I wasn’t about to give in to emotional blackmail.
    â€œThen go to make my life easier,” Sally said. “Mamaw’ll never let me hear the end of it if I don’t convince you—”
    â€œNo,” I said again. I pointed to the stack of clean laundry. “I already am making your life easier, anyway.”
    â€œYou’re going to go, Josie,” Sally said.
    â€œNo, I am not.”
    â€œJosie Toadfern, you’d better get your sorry ass over the river and through the woods to Mamaw’s house for Thanksgiving, or else your ass will really know what sorry is, after I give you a whipping you’ll never forget!”
    Now, that was enough—really it was—for me to just toss Sally out of my laundromat—at least as soon as her last load finished drying—and tell her there was no way I was about to let her bully me into going to Mamaw Toadfern’s house for Thanksgiving.
    In fact, I was just mad enough that I was ready to boycott the Bar-None, at least until after Thanksgiving.
    But I never got a chance to tell Sally off. Just as I opened my mouth to tell her . . . well, I can’t quite remember what I was going to say, but I’m sure it was quite clever . . . there was a tap at the front door of my laundromat.
    It drew my attention from Sally, and then I saw who was standing on the other side of my big pane glass window—just to the left of my logo (a toad on a lily pad bearing the phrase ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT), and whatever wittily devastating response I had in mind for Sally and why I would not go to Mamaw Toadfern’s for Thanksgiving dissolved to dust.
    And I was left staring, gapmouthed, at the woman standing just outside my laundromat window.
    â€œMy Lord,” said Sally. “I thought she swore thirteen years ago she was going to Massachusetts and never setting foot again in this godforsaken town. At least that’s the phrase I heard she used for her valedictory speech at her high school graduation.”
    â€œWould you look at that? Her hair . . . it’s so damned perfect. And her figure is so trim,” Cherry said, a pouting note of jealousy in her voice. “You’d think she’d have at least had the decency to have gained ten pounds and gotten split ends.”
    I said, “She’s probably still nice, too. And happily married. With two kids, a dog, and a big old house.”
    Then we all sighed with undisguised envy, while Rachel Burkette—the smartest, prettiest, nicest young lady ever to grow up in and then leave Paradise—stood outside waving at us.
    I started toward the door.
    â€œWait, Josie, you’re closed, remember?” said Cherry.
    â€œCherry!” Sally and I said in unison.
    Rachel