Southern Living Read Online Free

Granite?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    John David pulled his keys from his pocket and started dropping them from hand to hand, back and forth, as someone plays with a Slinky. He had keys to some twenty upscale Selby homes, including Suzanne’s, and they occupied a ring as big around as an orange.
    “I gotta go,” he said. “Where’s that throw pillow you want me to take back to Jeppeson’s?
    “Are you sure I don’t need it?”
    “I told you what I think, Suzanne. You need to work a fourth color into that living room, and that blue pillow is perfect.”
    “But it’s just so plain, John David. Can’t you find one with fringe or tassels or somethin’?”
    “Damnit, Suzanne, not everything in the house has got to look like Cinderella’s ball gown.”
    “I just don’t think Boone’ll like it.”
    “That’s bullshit, Suzanne. Boone doesn’t care a thing about this house.”
    “You don’t have to get ugly with me, John David! I’m just askin’ for tassels and fringe.”
    She stood up to walk him to the front door. Unlike the plumber and the exterminator and the other service workers, John David always used his clients’ front doors. He would park his Toyota truck in the driveway instead of the street and was even known to pull into the garage if there was a space.
    Having watched his truck disappear around the bend of Red Hill Drive, Suzanne walked into the foyer, shut the door, and leaned back against it. When she opened her eyes, she flipped on the chandelier overhead and glared at the walls, which had been stripped of all adornment in preparation for the project. Had Ronnie Dipson shown up as promised, these would now be covered by a Schweitzer print of magnolia blossoms on vanilla background, ninety-eight dollars a roll.
    Suzanne walked up to the wall and felt for a seam. With a red-painted fingernail she picked at the line until she pried an edge loose. Suzanne then pulled, expecting to remove from the wall a large scroll of old paper, but instead tore off a disappointing two-inch scrap. She continued to pick at this unwanted scab on her house, piece after tiny piece, until a pile of paper formed at her feet.
    ***
    “Do you like your dinner?” Suzanne asked.
    Boone wiped the corner of his mouth with a cotton napkin, golden fleur-de-lis on a burgundy background.
    “You already asked me that, Suzanne. Yes, the dinner’s fine.”
    They each sat at an end of the dining room table, separated by ten feet of polished mahogany that held a long, scarlet silk runner, two lit candles in sterling-silver holders, and a porcelain serving dish filled with something named Tokyo Surprise, which was a mixture of soba noodles, canned water chestnuts, baby corn, cubes of chicken, and cream of mushroom soup. Suzanne had found the casserole on the table marked “foreign.” She had wanted to avoid this table but was late arriving at the sale, and most of the traditional fare had already been sold. Not all of it was awful, however; Boone had enjoyed the dish named Mount Olympus that she served one day the previous week.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I like it. What kinda spaghetti is this?”
    “You made it, Suzanne. Don’t you know?”
    “Maybe I put in a wrong ingredient or somethin’.”
    Boone rarely finished a meal in less than forty-five minutes. To slow herself down, so she would finish after him, Suzanne would watch her husband and try to match his pace. He cut his food in the steady, methodical manner one would expect from a neurosurgeon, setting the knife down on the edge of the plate—
clink—
after every cut. Thanks to vigorous scrubbings each day at the hospital, Boone’s hands were immaculate and pale pink, the color of cooked salmon. His fingernails were trimmed and filed into perfect crescent moons. Boone engaged in no activity that would endanger his hands. He would not pick up a hammer or try to open an obstinate jar of pickles.
    “I see the dogs of Red Hill are at it