stomp out of the room.
“Something wrong?” asked Dwight, who had followed me into our bedroom.
“Not a thing,” I snapped. “I love being overruled in front of Cal.”
“Huh?”
“I told Cal I was packing y’all a healthy lunch and then you came in and said you’d stop for greasy cheeseburgers and french fries.”
“I did? Sorry, shug. You should have said something.”
“Right. And make myself the evil no-fun stepmother again? Thanks but no thanks.” I headed for our bathroom to take a shower.
“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. What’s the big deal? An occasional cheeseburger’s not going to kill him.”
I paused in the doorway and made a show of looking at the clock. “You’d better go if you’re going to meet Will.”
“Deb’rah?”
I ignored his outstretched hand and slammed the door between us, half-hoping he’d follow, but before I had fully shucked off my robe and gown, his truck roared past the window.
And no, dammit, I was
CHAPTER
2
I stood in the shower, water sluicing down my body, and lathered shampoo into my hair. I was so furious with Dwight, it’s a wonder the water didn’t sizzle as soon as it touched my skin.
Hadn’t we agreed to present a united front? For six months I had bent over backwards, trying to make up to his son for the mother he’d lost, trying to be consistent and fair and walk the line between understanding his loss and giving order and security to his life, and this was the thanks I got? Why did Dwight automatically assume I was in the wrong when I knew damn well I wasn’t? Everybody says that junk food and poor eating habits make for obese kids. Did he want Cal to grow up fat and unhealthy? And just as importantly, was Dwight going to let Cal do an end run around me every time I made a ruling that he didn’t like?
I sighed, finished rinsing the shampoo from my hair, and turned off the water to towel myself dry. I had one stepson.
One.
My mother had acquired eight when she married Daddy. How on earth did she wind up winning their love while asserting her authority?
“
I sighed again. It had taken her years with some of the older boys, but they had all come around in the end. I just wasn’t sure I had her stamina and patience.
Well, the hell with it. If Dwight wanted to go storming off like that, I wasn’t going to sit around here feeling sorry for myself.
Today was only Saturday, but there was nothing to keep me home. Although the summer conference of district court judges would not officially start until Monday, I was on the Education Committee and we planned to get together Sunday evening to begin brainstorming for the fall conference program. But hey! It was June, the hotel was right on Wrightsville Beach, and I had a new red maillot that didn’t look too shabby on me. I called the hotel, and when they told me I could check in that afternoon, that’s all I needed to hear.
I printed out the files I would need, then quickly packed and whistled for Bandit.
Daddy had volunteered to keep Cal’s dog while we were away, so I drove through the back lanes of the farm to the homeplace with Bandit on the seat beside me. Paws on the dashboard, he peered through the windshield as if he knew he was in for a great weekend.
Daddy was sitting on the top step of the wide and shady front porch when I got there. The porch catches every bit of breeze but the air was dead still today and felt as if it’d already reached the predicted high of ninety when I opened the door of my air-conditioned car. Daddy scorns air-conditioning and our muggy heat seldom bothers him.
As always, his keen blue eyes were shaded by the straw panama that he wears from the first warm days of spring till the first cool days of autumn. His blue shirt was faded and his chinos were frayed at the ankle, part of the I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-pore-ol’-dirt-farmer look that he adopted during his bootlegging days and has never seen the need to change, no matter how many nice shirts and pants his daughters-in-law and I give him. (Maidie, his longtime housekeeper, just rolls her eyes and puts everything through the washer a time or two with bleach before he’ll wear something new without nagging.) His long legs stretched down till his worn brogans rested on the lowest step.
Ladybelle, a dignified seven-year-old redbone coonhound, lay on the dirt near his feet, and Bandit was all over her in bouncy excitement the minute I let him out of the car.
Daddy stood up and shook his head at so much canine energy on such a hot day. “He don’t seem to’ve calmed down much since he come, has he?”
“That’s the terrier in him,” I said. “He’s getting better at home. You sure he’s not going to be too much trouble? Andrew said he’d pen him in with his beagles if you don’t want to be bothered with another house dog.”
