Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything Read Online Free

never stayed long. I was happier on a college campus. As an adjunct, my mother wasn’t terribly well paid, and it became my job to keep her finances and her academic life on track. I smoothed her frequent dustups with whatever dean objected to her travels and organized her scientific data on computer files. It was the kind of work that made me valuable to other professors. So one job came easily after another.
    Before she went off to one of the last butterfly mating grounds in Mexico, I had handed her some clean socks to stuff into her duffel. My mother took them with thanks and then looked at me as if suddenly waking up to a research factoid she’d missed. She said, “Nature is strange and wonderful, kiddo. There’s something out there for you. Why don’t you go find it?”
    It stung—her perspective that I didn’t have a life.
    A month later, a person from the State Department found me to say she’d been killed falling off a cliff while chasing a butterfly—hardly a big finish for someone always in search of adventure.
    Honeybelle died with an equal lack of fanfare. But for me, her death felt as if my mom had tumbled off her cliff all over again. It was hard for me to accept they were both gone—both larger-than-life women who should have had more impact on the world before they left it.
    After the last humble citizen of Mule Stop said good-bye to Honeybelle with a pat for her dog outside the church, Miss Ruffles jumped against my leg. She looked up at me, eyes perky again, her stub of a tail suddenly wagging. The next moment, she took off down the steps.
    She knew her way home, and she pulled me down Sam Houston Boulevard, the town’s main drag, which ran all the way east to the interstate and west to where the old rail station and stockyards used to be, bisecting the college campus in the middle. The University of the Alamo was a noisy college that gave an otherwise sleepy town most of its energy. Students tended to major in agriculture or engineering for the oil industry. Or sports broadcasting, sports management, or sports medicine. Football provided the heart of the school.
    We passed by the public library, where a kind librarian often took her smoke break to look after Miss Ruffles while I checked out books. At a trot, Miss Ruffles led me past Gamble’s funeral home, the stately bank where Honeybelle served as a director, and the first of many college bars.
    The corner was taken up by the Boots ’N’ Buckles Emporium, which advertised Tony Lama cowboy boots, Stetson hats, fancy belt buckles, and saddle repair. Honeybelle had often stopped in to ask Joe, the elderly proprietor, to polish her boots. Barefoot while he made her boots shine, she tried on hats and teased him. He treated her like a queen. I remembered his check being among those from townspeople Honeybelle loaned money to, and I hoped he could afford to remain in business now that she was gone.
    Everywhere I looked there were things that would never be the same without Honeybelle—not just the businesses she patronized, or the small shops she’d financed. She had recently won a campaign for new street signs and flowers in window boxes, and triumphed in a fierce battle against litter and graffiti. Thanks to Honeybelle, Mule Stop looked pretty enough for its own postcard. Not a bad legacy, but not as good as seeing Honeybelle herself motoring down the main street, waving from her convertible as if she owned the whole town.
    Gracie Garcia came out of Cowgirl Redux, the clothing resale shop, and grabbed my elbow.
    â€œIs the memorial service over already? Or did they throw you out of church? Or—Lord have mercy, Miss Ruffles didn’t bite anybody, did she?”
    Gracie was the first person my own age I’d befriended when I came to Mule Stop. It had only taken a couple of days for me to realize my Ohio clothes weren’t suited to the searing Texas sun and heat, and Gracie had been