'I knew it!' She rocked back on her heels and tucked behind her ears the locks of red-gold hair that kept falling over the broad planes of her face. 'I just knew it! That nasty, whoremongering adulterer!'
Irrelevantly, I couldn't help noting that, if nothing else, a strict church upbringing certainly does provide a richer assortment of synonyms than the variations of 'that cheatin' summanabitch' I usually hear in court.
'Does Cindy know?'
'Not unless he told her,' said Annie Sue. 'You think we ought to go over there after supper?'
'Too late. She said he was picking her up after work. And she just laughed when I asked where they were going.'
They stared at each other grimly.
'He's older than we thought, too,' said Annie Sue. 'Twenty-five, didn't you say, Deborah?'
'Or twenty-six. Reid wasn't sure.'
There was an appalled silence. At sixteen, older men were nineteen-year-old college freshmen. Someone ten years older?
'I
They didn't ask my advice and there was nothing I could say that would make any difference. They might not be grown, but they weren't children either and there was no way to put raging hormones back in the box once they were loose. * * *
By the time Annie Sue was ready to admit that it was getting too dark to see, mosquitoes were about to eat us alive and all the wall boxes had wires to them although nothing was actually hooked to the panel box yet.
As we loaded tools and ladders back into the truck in the gathering dusk, Herman drove up in the company's newest truck. I saw right off that he wasn't in the best of moods, but I couldn't tell whether it was because he'd had a hard day or because he was half sick.
He was determined to inspect Annie Sue's work and snapped at her impatiently when she couldn't put her hands on the big flashlight that was supposed to be in the back of the truck. Annie Sue got tight-jawed and defensive, and Paige went beet red with sympathetic impotence. It didn't help Herman's temper when I spotted the missing flashlight on the seat of his truck—right where he'd left it.
Tension crackled like heat lightning in the starless sky, but I was too hot and tired to play the thankless role of peacemaker. A mosquito whined in my ear, another was gnawing on my ankle, and my deodorant threw in the towel as perspiration trickled down between my breasts. Suddenly, all I could think of was how nice it'd feel to be floating in Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash's pool, a bourbon and Pepsi floating in an untippable tumbler beside me, far, far away from quarrelsome people.
'See you tomorrow,' I said and left them to it. * * *
When I called that evening to tell Ned O'Donnell that I was reducing Layton Ogburn's bail, he was suspicious. 'Don't you do it on my account.'
'A little ol' district court judge doing favors for a superior court judge? Never in a million years, Your Honor.'
I told Zack Young the same thing when he stuck his head in during the midmorning recess next day and thanked me for my cooperation.
'Raising that much cash would've cost your client more than his profits on a WomenAid house,' I said, pouring another glass of ice water. 'Better in their pocket than in a mortgage company's.'
'If it came to that,' Zack agreed blandly. 'I had an appointment with a superior judge over in Wake County this afternoon. You just saved me a trip to Raleigh.' * * *
The day continued overcast and heavy, but the rain held off, tormenting us with a promise of relief that wouldn't come. I sweated through morning court in my heavy robe, then drove home at lunch, took off all my underwear and panty hose, and drove back to court wearing only an opaque cotton sundress and sandals under that horse blanket.
On the afternoon docket, a flasher was followed by a thief who'd stolen his next-door neighbor's air conditioner right out of the window. Both pleaded the heat as a mitigating circumstance. I sent the flasher for a Mental Health evaluation and sent the thief to an air-conditioned jail cell for forty-eight hours.
When I met Annie Sue after work, I warned her that I'd have to leave early for a political meeting over in Makely. She seemed as listless and dispirited as the weather.
'Your dad give you a hard time last night?' I asked.
She shrugged. 'Not really. In fact, at breakfast this morning, he told Mom I was doing good. I don't know why he couldn't just tell me though. Why does he have to be like that?'
'At the risk of sounding sexist, honey, that's just the way some men are.'
Her smile was wan. 'Yeah.'
'Did you talk to Cindy?'
She grimaced. 'For all the good it did. Guess what? He doesn't love his wife. They're going to get a divorce. 'And what about the baby?' Paige asked her.'
