Miss Julia Renews Her Vows Read Online Free

more.”
    “I think you left out one, LuAnne, because I remember hearing about her marrying somebody who lived on a yacht or a houseboat or something on the water. Seems like he had a foreign-sounding name.”
    “You’re right! That must be where the Dela-something comes from. So that makes five husbands, and every last one of them dead and buried. And you know something else? Arley said that Francie is already eyeing every man who lives at the Villas.”
    “My goodness, they’re all on their last legs already. I’d be tired of going to funerals, if it were me.”
    “Julia, you’re not getting it. I tell you, I think something weird is going on. Tell me this, how many people do you know who’ve racked up five dead husbands over a ten-year period?”
    “Well, not any, come to think of it. But LuAnne, you can’t mean you think she had anything to do with those deaths.” I paused to let the idea soak into my mind. “Can you?”
    “I wouldn’t put it past her,” LuAnne said darkly. “But if you tell anybody I said that, I’ll deny it to my dying day.”
    Promising that I’d never quote her about such a thing, I went on to ask, “What should we do, LuAnne? I mean, do we include her in everything again?”
    “I say we don’t. Everybody who lives at the Villas seems to get all wrapped up in the activities out there, so she may not even have time for us. Or want any, either. That would get her off our backs, but just in case, I think we ought to ignore her. I mean, she’s been here at least six months and who has she contacted? Nobody, that’s who. So as far as we know, she’s still in Florida.”
    “That’s true. But I find it strange that she’s not called any of us. You know how she is, always so confident that nothing can go on without her being a part of it.”
    “I wouldn’t call it confidence,” LuAnne said. “I’d call it high-and-mighty arrogance. Just because Wilbur Pitts was a diplomat in some country nobody’s ever heard of was no reason for them to retire here with their noses stuck up so high they were in danger of drowning when it rained.”
    “He wasn’t so bad, LuAnne. In fact, I thought he was quite nice. A little shy, perhaps, which I thought a bit unusual for a diplomat, but maybe that’s why they retired him.”
    “Well, she wasn’t shy. She came sailing into town like a queen, and you know, Julia, we all kowtowed to her. We just let her lord it over us as much as she wanted to. Her and those awful hats. And that simpering laugh, remember? Even when you didn’t see her, you always knew when she was around. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Arley said Francie doesn’t have a wrinkle on her face, and Arley thinks she’s had work done on it, because she’s started wearing pancake makeup like you wouldn’t believe. Probably to hide the scars.”
    “Oh my,” I murmured, trying to picture Francie’s overly powdered face realigned and made up.
    “Anyway,” LuAnne went on, “I say that what she’s been up to these past ten years cancels out any need for us to get tangled up with her again.” LuAnne paused, then said, “I never liked that woman to begin with, and I think we ought to let sleeping dogs lie.”
    Agreeing that we had no social obligation to seek out Francie Pitts, or whoever she now was, especially because she’d made no effort toward us, we ended our conversation to await developments.
    But I couldn’t get Francie off my mind, maybe because it was such a change to have something besides Hazel Marie’s situation to occupy it. I’d never understood Francie’s overweening self-possession. It was as if the idea that she’d be unwelcome anywhere by anybody never entered her head. LuAnne had been right: queenly was the correct word for her. It was not that she’d been pushy, exactly. She’d just accepted inclusion as her proper due.
    But the strange thing about it, especially our allowing her to get away with it, was that she was such a nonentity. She was a