“Here am I, Lord, send me,” I said prayerfully. Cedar Gap is ’way the other side of the state, a good five-or six-hour drive from Colleton County.
Longmire snorted. He knows the Bible even better than I do. “When did you turn into Isaiah?”
“The minute you offered me a legitimate reason to head for the hills.”
“Getting a little hot for you down here in the flatlands?”
Was that a chuckle in his voice? I considered for a moment. “Minnie called you, didn’t she?”
“Good woman, your sister-in-law,” he said blandly. “I owe her a lot. Did you know she was head of the Colleton County Democratic Women the first year I ran for the bench?”
CHAPTER 2
After Judge Longmire’s call on Friday evening, Dwight and I spent half of Saturday walking around my small two-bedroom house out here on the family farm, trying to decide where to add on a new and larger master bedroom so that we could keep my old one in permanent readiness for his son. I hadn’t seen Cal since Dwight told him about us, but he’s a nice little boy and we get along just fine every time Dwight brings him out to swim in the pond or to ride the horses or the four-wheelers my nieces and nephews are variously addicted to.
Even though my house sits a half-mile off the nearest road, I’ve never had a chance to feel isolated. The farm is crisscrossed with dirt lanes that the whole family use as shortcuts or racetracks, and April spotted us on her way over to Daddy’s with a sweet potato pie still warm from the oven. April moves walls the way other women move furniture, and my brother Andrew grumbles that he never knows from one month to the next whether he’ll get up some night to go to the bathroom and find their bedroom moved to the other side of the house before he can get back. Nevertheless, she made some sensible suggestions about water lines and septic tanks before she left, and so did Seth and Will when they came by after lunch looking for Haywood, who showed up a few minutes later on one of the farm’s smaller tractors.
Will’s the one who actually built my house, and Seth can find his way around a blueprint, too, but Haywood knows precious little beyond the basics. Didn’t stop him from telling us what he’d do if it was him, though. Or Robert either, who had tired of waiting for Haywood to bring the tractor over and had come to find him.
I excused myself to go do laundry and they were still at it two loads later.
Carrying a fresh jug of iced tea and a half-dozen plastic cups, I rejoined them in time to hear Robert say, “— and build it from right there.”
“Or we could just build a new house in Maine,” I said, setting the jug and cups on the back of the tractor.
Will and Dwight laughed as I perched cross-legged on the open tailgate of Dwight’s pickup to pour them tea. Robert and Haywood didn’t get it.
“Maine?” said Haywood. “Now why would you want to build a house ’way up yonder?”
“Get your cup and let’s go,” Seth told him with a big grin. “I’ll explain it to you over at Robert’s.”
“Sorry about that,” I said as the last of my brothers disappeared down the rutted lane.
“Why?” Dwight asked. “Think I don’t know the way they like to help and give advice? Besides, you didn’t have anything special planned, did you?”
“Well, when you called this morning, you said something about wanting to wet a line and I had my mouth set for pan fish.”
“Really?” He moved closer and brushed my hair back from my face with both hands so he could examine my mouth with exaggerated care. “Nope, that’s not how it looks to me.”
His lips were mere inches from mine and I didn’t need a second invitation to put my arms around his neck and let him swing me down from the tailgate, although I could have taken him right there on the back of the truck. Summer had been long and celibate for both of us; and my house here, his apartment in Dobbs, on a couch, on a bed, on a floor or table, we had spent these past ten days making up for lost time. Hard to remind myself that I’d spent my whole life treating him like another one of the boys—not when the mere touch of his hand on my hair was now enough to unleash every hormone in my body.
It was full dark by the time we were ready to think about food again. Much too late to try to catch our supper out on the pond. Instead, we went over to Jerry’s Steak & Catfish House and had a waitress bring it to us with a side dish of onion rings and a basket of hushpuppies.
Big mistake.
Every third person who passed by our table was someone who’d known Dwight or me from birth or grade school, and they each had to stop and tell us how surprised they were when they heard we were engaged, “but we’re wishing y’all lots of luck and happiness.” Whenever I lifted my eyes from my plate, I saw beaming faces watching us.
“Thank God for Cedar Gap,” I said when we were back in Dwight’s truck, headed for home. “Don’t you wish you could get out of Dodge, too?”
“Why?” he asked, sounding honestly puzzled.
“The way everybody’s burbling over us? It’s not making you crazy?”
He grinned. “Nope.”
“Well, it is me. I feel like I’m drowning in a tub of warm honey.”
“Not me. I sort of like it that people seem happy for us. Besides, you’re the one who thought that getting married would generate some political goodwill, remember? Seems to me it’s working.”
I sighed and glumly admitted he was right.
At the house, he didn’t switch off the truck. “You’ll want to pack tonight and get an early start tomorrow and I’d just be in the way.”
