Southern Discomfort Read Online Free Page A

real funny four-second sequence.)
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    By five-fifteen, the reception was finally winding down and Frances and I ran upstairs to pick up our briefcases and get out of our robes.
    Hers was a cool summer-weight—winning two elections must give a judge the confidence to buy a second robe. As she unzipped, she said, "Didn't anybody tell you judges aren't supposed to make campaign promises?"
    Promises made in the spring have a way of coming due in the fall. I knew that. But this was only summer.
    "It wasn't really a promise. Besides," I sighed, "I thought they'd be finished building before I finished campaigning. If Perry Byrd hadn't up and died—"
    "—you could've got credit for singing with the angels? Without having to show up for choir practice?" She shook her head and laughed. "Child, you really are a politician!"
    Back downstairs, the Marthas were packing their left-overs in Tupperware boxes, and after I thanked Frances again and said goodbye, I went over to the table and yielded to the temptation of a single pecan puff. It tasted like fluffy buttered air.
    "You didn't eat a bite," said one of the Marthas at my elbow. "Let me fix you a plate."
    "Fat cells are just as fluffy as pecan puffs,"
warned my internal preacher, who also keeps a running total of calories consumed and energy expended.
    "Better not," I said regretfully, fishing for her name.
    Gladys. Gladys McGee. A sweet face, nondescript body, appropriately Martha-like in a beige-and-rose two-piece dress. The wife—no, the widow of one of Dobbs's independent businessmen. Insurance? Real estate?
    Accountant. That was it. Ralph McGee, CPA. A small office next door to my bank, two blocks down Main Street from the courthouse. He'd kept the books for my brother Herman's electrical contracting business. A bit of a domestic bully, I seemed to recall. Gladys had been an attractive blonde once. She couldn't be much past forty, but her hair was now that indeterminate color between light brown and gray. Despite low-keyed makeup, she looked older than forty, and there were deep lines beside her mouth and around her eyes. Continuing grief? Maybe Ralph hadn't left her very well off? And wasn't there a daughter?
    The teenage girls who'd helped earlier were gone now like a chattering flock of bright-feathered birds, but among them had been Herman's Annie Sue and a pretty honey blonde.
    "That wasn't your Cindy I saw before, was it?"
    The worry lines smoothed and Gladys was pretty again when she smiled with maternal pride. "Don't they grow up fast?"
    "She's gorgeous!" I said, with only a little exaggeration. I recalled now that Annie Sue had grumbled about how strict her friend Cindy's dad was. Even stricter than Herman, who half the time acted like it was the 1890s if Annie Sue could be believed.
    Still smiling, Gladys went back to packing up the pecan puffs. "She's a little headstrong, but a good child, too. It's so easy not to be these days, am I wrong? I'm sure you see plenty of that in court. It's been hard on both of us, losing Ginger and Ralph in the same month—"
    Ralph I knew about, but who the hell was Ginger? Then I remembered that Cindy had an older sister.
    —much too young, of course, but she and Tom had been sweethearts since eighth grade and we promised that if she'd at least finish high school, we'd give them a nice wedding right after graduation. And then, only two days after they got back from their honeymoons—"
    I knew what was expected of me. "It's been such a shock to everybody. Ralph was still young, wasn't he?"
    "Only forty-six," Gladys agreed. "But then they always say that the younger you are, the more serious a heart attack is."
    I tried to sound concerned and interested. "And he'd never had any heart trouble before?"
    "Not a bit." She snapped the lid shut on the pecan puffs and one of her friends took the box and added it to a growing pile of plastic containers at the end of the table. "He'd had some summer flu—least that's