them wimped out without making landfall.
Like Hurricane Edouard was about to do.
Just his luck if the rest of hurricane season stayed peaceful. When he came up with the idea of doing a day- by-day diary of a killer storm, Edouard was still kicking butt in the Caribbean and had people down at the coast talking about having to evacuate by Labor Day. Now, though . . .
He wasn’t wishing Wilmington any more bad luck, but a category 3 or 4 hurricane would sure make a bitchin’ project.
“Son, I know you think you have to say things like that to be cool with the other kids,” Dad chided him recently. “But you let it become a habit and one of these days, you’re going to slip and say it to your mother and how cool will you feel then?”
Not for the first time, Stan considered the parental paradox. His father might be the preacher, but it was his mother who had all the Thou Shalt Nots engraved on her heart.
As if she’d heard him think of her, Clara Freeman tapped on the door and opened it without waiting for his response.
“Stanley? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Sorry, Mama, I was working on my science project.”
Clara Freeman’s face softened a bit at that. Guiltily, Stan knew that schoolwork could always justify a certain amount of leeway.
Yet schoolwork seldom took precedence over church work.
“Leave that for later, son. Right now, what with all the rain we’ve been having, Sister Jordan’s grass needs cutting real bad and I told her you’d be glad to go over this morning and do it for her.”
Without argument, Stan closed the notebook and placed it neatly on his bookshelf, then began cramming his feet into those gawdawful sneakers. His face was expressionless but every cussword he’d ever heard surged through his head. Bad enough that this wet and steamy August kept him cutting their own grass every week without Mama looking over the fences to their neighbors’ yards. Sister Jordan had two teenage grandsons who lived right outside Cotton Grove, less than a mile away, but Mama could be as implacable as the Borg—which he’d only seen on friends’ TV since Mama didn’t believe in it for them. If ever she saw an opportunity to build his character through Christian sacrifice, resistance was futile.
Any argument and she’d be on her knees, begging God’s forgiveness for raising such a lazy, self-centered son, begging in a soft sorrowful voice that always cut him deeper than any switch she might have used.
On the other hand, if he spent the next hour cutting Sister Jordan’s grass, Mama wouldn’t fuss about him going over to Dobbs with Dad this evening.
* * *
This was the second time they’d made love. The first had been in guilty haste, an act as irrational as gulping too much sweet cool water after days of wandering in a dry and barren land.
And just as involuntary.
Today they lay together on the smooth cotton sheets of her bed, away from any eyes that might see or tongues that might tell. Despite the utter privacy, and even though her mouth and body had responded just as passionately, just as hungrily as his, her lovemaking was again curiously silent. No noisy panting, no long ecstatic sobs, no outcries.
Cyl moaned only once as her body arched beneath his, a low sound that was almost a sigh, then she relaxed against the cool white sheets and murmured, “Holy, holy, holy.”
“Don’t,” Ralph Freeman groaned. “Please don’t.”
She turned her face to his, her brown eyes bewildered. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t mock.”
“
“Not me,” he said miserably. “God.”
She traced the line of his cheek with her fingertips. “I wasn’t mocking,” she whispered. “I was thanking Him.”
* * *
Over in Dobbs, Dr. Jeremy Potts decided he’d put it off as long as he could. Having slept in this morning, he’d had to wait till late afternoon to go running. This hot and humid August had kept his resentments simmering. If not for the three biggest bitches of Colleton County, he told himself, he could be working out in the lavish air- conditioned exercise room at the country club instead of running laps on a school track under a broiling sun. He could follow that workout with a refreshing shower instead of driving back to his condo dripping in sweat. Thanks to his ex-wife who’d been wound up by her lawyer’s wife, not to mention that judge who gave Felicia everything but the gold filling in his back molar, it would be at least another two years before he could afford the country club’s initiation fees and monthly dues.
Thank you very much, Lynn Bullock, he thought angrily as he laced up his running shoes.
* * *
Jason Bullock hefted his athletic bag over his shoulder and paused in the doorway to watch his wife brush her long blonde hair. She had a trick of bending over and brushing it upside down so that it almost touched the floor, then she’d sit up and flip her head back so that her hair fell around her pretty heart-shaped face with a natural fluffiness.
“See you later, then, hon. I’ll grab a hot dog at the field and be home around eight, eight-thirty.”
