“Come on, sugar,” Mary Jess told my groom. “I see some mistletoe over there and I intend to get me a big ol’ kiss. You don’t mind, do you, Deborah?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“Not a bit,” she said cheerfully as she hauled Dwight away. “You can kiss Doug, if you want.”
He cocked his head at me and we both laughed. Before I could ask him anything, though, two of my fellow judges came up to wish me well and to rehash the elections just past. Now that judges in North Carolina run on a nonpartisan ticket, politics is marginally less divisive, although all of us know who’s liberal and who’s conservative, who’s for the death penalty and who would be happy to have it abolished.
The jury was still out for me on that point. Putting a killer to death winds up costing the state more than giving him life imprisonment, and only the most naive think of it as a deterrent anymore. Too, I’m beginning to get a little uneasy with the idea of my state acting purely for revenge, especially when it doesn’t administer the death penalty fairly. On the other hand, every time I start thinking it should be abolished completely, along will come the murder of a child or an old woman that’s so flat-out brutal that the details can’t be printed in a family newspaper, and I’m right there with the old eye-for-an-eye and a-life-for-a-life attitude.
My subliminal thoughts on the death penalty were suddenly interrupted when, through a sober-suited group of attorneys, I spotted a smiling brown face. She came straight to me and I stared in disbelief.
“Hey, girl,” she said, laughing at my total surprise.
I gave her a hug. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I heard it was a party, and since you won’t come to Washington, I decided Washington better come to you.”
Cyl DeGraffenried is all things black and beautiful. Top five percent in her law class at Duke, too. Doug really hated it when she left his office a year ago last fall and joined a prestigious black lobbyist firm in D.C.
“You came all this way for me?” Our friendship had gotten off to a rocky start, but we’d since shared so much that I knew we’d always be tight.
“Well, you and Grandma. She threatened to disown me if I didn’t come visit now, since I can’t be here for Christmas.”
Cyl wore a deep purple silk pantsuit, nipped to accentuate her tiny waist. White silk scarf, chunky gold jewelry, and a haircut to die for. I knew I looked just fine in my own caramel-colored wool dress, knee-high brown boots, and a great-aunt’s topaz brooch and earrings, but she was so polished and urban that I felt just a touch of country dowdiness.
“How long are you down for?” I asked.
“Only for the weekend. I fly back after church tomorrow.”
“What do you mean you can’t be here for Christmas? Are you telling me you can’t come to our wedding either?”
She shook her pretty head. “Sorry, but I think I’m going to be in Wisconsin.”
“Wisconsin? You ‘think’?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Then come for breakfast tomorrow morning. We can’t talk here and it sounds like we’ve got some serious catching up to do.”
We’d barely set the time before someone came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes.
“Guess who, darlin’?”
For a moment, my mind blanked and then I laughed. “Brix Junior?”
I turned around to see for sure and was caught up in a warm hug by my mother’s first cousin. Reid’s dad was Stephenson tall, with a rangy athletic build and snow white hair. Handsome as ever. Reid will look just like him at that age.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “They still letting you into these dinners?”
“Don’t be pert, darlin’,” he said. “I may be retired but I’ve kept up my membership and soon as I heard they were throwing this thing for you tonight, I told Jane we had to come.”
“Is she with you?”
Brix Junior nodded toward a clump of women over near the windows and yes, there was Jane with Julia Lee.
“You both look marvelous,” I said honestly.
“Retirement agrees with us,” he said complacently. “Course, Jane sits on as many boards and foundations as she ever did, but it’s a poor week I don’t get in at least five rounds of golf.”
Brix Junior had always been popular with his colleagues, and they came crowding around to see him. As he turned to hold court, he said, “We’re staying with Zell and Ash tonight, so we’ll see you for lunch tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? Stricken, I remembered that Aunt Zell had extracted a promise that Dwight and I would come for Sunday lunch tomorrow, a date I had forgotten to calendar. Breakfast with Cyl, lunch with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, supper here at Jerry’s again tomorrow night? With all this social eating, I was going to have to let out some seams if I wasn’t careful.
John Claude took his place at the head table and rapped his empty glass with a fork to get our attention. “If everyone will be seated, our waiters are ready to take your orders.”
I looked around for Dwight and found him rubbing lipstick from his face. “How many women have you been kissing?” I asked him.
