Something to Talk About Read Online Free Page A

sells manure. See? It’s all color coordinated and everything,” he pointed out. Sure enough, there were towering piles of neatly arranged manure in different shades of brown.
    “Adam, you certainly know a lot about this area,” she said as she continued to gaze at the unusual array.
    “You know me, once I decided to build a summer place for the family, I started doing research. I’ve been up here a few times looking around and I found out quite a bit about Lake County. My dad was born here, you know.”
    Alicia pushed the brim of her battered baseball cap up so that she could see Adam’s profile better. “No, I didn’t know that. Where in Lake County was he born?”
    “He was born and raised in Idlewild . We’re going there first so I can show you around. Idlewild used to be this fabulous black resort back in the day. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was the place to be. They had camping, fishing, hunting, and boating, and besides all that, there were these amazing nightclubs with floor shows that rivaled the Copacabana and the Las Vegas strip. Everybody who was anybody came to Idlewild . W.E.B. Dubois, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, you name them, they were here,” he told her.
    “Wow. I’ve heard about it, but I never knew what it was really like,” Alicia admitted. “Your sister’s movie gave me more insight on it than anything else I’ve seen.” A few years earlier, his only sister, Benita, had written a screenplay ti tl ed Idlewild that was produced by her husband, Clay Deveraux. “So, Adam, what happened to it? Why did people stop coming to Idlewild ?”
    Adam raised one shoulder in a gesture of resignation. “Desegregation happened, mostly. People came to Idlewild because the white resorts wouldn’t allow them in. When the color bars were raised, people scattered en masse. They didn’t want to come here and be treated like royalty anymore; they wanted to go where they were barely tolerated,” he said with a hint of bitterness.
    Alicia opened her mouth to respond but was distracted by the sight of a gas station ahead. Adam let her out in front of the building and she made a mad dash for the facilities. Adam was pumping gas when she returned a few minutes later drinking from a large bot tl e of Dasani water. He went inside to pay for the gas and rejoined Alicia, giving her a sardonic smile.
    “What?” she asked innocently.
    Adam nodded at the water. “You were just complaining about having to go and here you are filling up again. Is that logical?”
    She looked from the bot tl e of water to Adam and gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “Okay, maybe not. But we’ll be there pretty soon, right?”
    “Yes, we’re almost there.”
    After they arrived in Baldwin, Idlewild’s neighboring community, they checked into the Pere Marquette River Lodge, a motel that also offered quaint two-bedroom log cabins. Alicia took a look around the cabin and was very pleased with what she saw. The cabins were comfortable and nicely decorated in a rustic lodge motif that made them homey and inviting. “This is really nice, Adam. When we come back, we’ll have to plan on cooking while we’re here,” she said as she inspected the small but nicely appointed kitchen.
    Adam knew she was talking about the inevitable trips from Detroit that constructing a house in Lake County would engender, but it sounded like she was talking about vacations for the two of them. For his own reasons, he liked the way that sounded.
    ***
    After a day of exploring Idlewild they had dinner at the Village Inn in Baldwin where Alicia, as she put it, made a pig of herself over the homemade carrot cake. It was dense, rich, and moist with the best cream cheese frosting she’d ever eaten and she had two pieces. Adam was satisfied with one slice of chocolate cake with thick fudge frosting, but, as always, he got a charge out of watching her enjoy her dessert. When she licked the last bit of frosting from her fork, he felt a faint