yesterday were right hefty, and Bel won’t let me have any more till both the children are home, and Jane Ann can’t come till tomorrow.”
He gave me a hopeful look.
What the hell? Another serving of fruitcake wasn’t going to affect that fifty-inch waistline any more than cutting two million out of the federal budget was going to affect the national deficit. I took his jacket and sent him on into the living room.
“Lord have mercy!” I heard him say. “What you boys got there?”
A gleeful
It was almost nine-thirty before Haywood reluctantly left. By then I had folded and put away two loads of laundry and the train was circling the tree, headlight shining, whistle blowing, smoke puffing. A pile of pine twigs had been tossed on the fire, sacrificed to give better clearance for the locomotive. Cal turned the controls over to Dwight, let Bandit outside for a final time, then went off to brush his teeth and get into bed. Bandit had already settled in beside him when I went to check on them.
I’m not sure if he was getting less self-conscious about accepting affection, but he had quit shying away from my touch. When I leaned over to kiss his forehead that night after tucking the blanket around him, he actually hugged me back and said, “Dad really likes that we got him that train, doesn’t he?”
“He really does,” I agreed, remembering how solemnly he’d handed me the twenty dollars he had saved up to help pay for it.
He reminds me of a young horse that’s not quite saddle-broke. Enough sugar cubes, enough unsudden movements, and one of these days he’s going to trot right over to me without any coaxing.
Or so I kept telling myself.
On the other hand, he had almost quit calling me by name, referring to me as “she” or “her” or “you” unless there was absolutely no way to avoid saying “Deborah.” Dwight hadn’t noticed and I wasn’t going to call attention to it, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt a little.
When I came back to the living room, Dwight had put a CD of soft carols on the player and turned off all the lights except for the tree itself. The last log of the evening burned low on the hearth. I slipped off my shoes to join him on the couch, lying down across his chest with his arms around me and my head on his shoulder.
Snuggling myself more deeply into his arms, I said, “You don’t have any plans for our anniversary, do you?”
“Dinner at Las Margaritas, then back here for champagne,” he said promptly. “Mama’s already said Cal can spend the night there.”
I was touched. Dinner at that Mexican restaurant in Garner had led to his unexpected proposal.
“Sounds wonderful,” I told him. “And then can we go dancing Tuesday night with Portland and Avery?”
He nodded, then murmured, “Thank you for my train.” He tipped my face up for a long sweet kiss and we held each other quietly, savoring the moment. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be, just here and now, together, both aware of where this would lead but without any urgency to rush.
Eventually, he slipped his hand up under my sweater and chuckled to realize that I’d shucked my bra sometime earlier.
The log had burned down to embers before we finally pulled ourselves up, unplugged the tree, and got ready for bed.
While brushing my teeth, I remembered that odd quality in Dwight’s voice when he called me before; and when I joined him under the covers, I asked what had kept him at work.
“You know how the hospitals always draw a vial of blood when car wreck victims are brought in and how they test for alcohol?”
I nodded.
“Well, when they drew Mallory Johnson’s, it registered point-oh-three.”
“Really?” Even though I didn’t know the girl, that surprised me. “Nothing my nieces said indicated she did alcohol.”
“Yeah, that’s what Malcolm said, too, when he and Sarah came in yesterday to hear our findings on the wreck.” Dwight reached up to switch off the lamp above his head. “When I told them her alcohol level, he went ballistic. Swore that Mallory never drank anything stronger than Coke and that somebody must have slipped it into whatever she drank at a party she went to after the game Tuesday night. Not just a little alcohol, but maybe crack or meth, too. Sarah did say that she was taking Benadryl for her cold and even a little whiskey could have intensified the effects of Benadryl, slowed her reflexes, maybe left her disoriented. That might explain why she’d go off a straight stretch of highway. I’ve got a deputy checking it out, getting a list of who was there and if anyone saw her add a shot of something to her Coke.”
“The girls are coming over tomorrow morning to make cookies,” I said slowly. “Want me to ask if they’ve heard anything?”
“Yeah. Won’t hurt, and it might make Malcolm and Sarah feel better to know. Right now, he’s pushing us to run a tox screen on her blood sample even though that would take at least six weeks. I didn’t want to tell him we don’t have the budget for that. Not for a one-car accident.”
CHAPTER 8
—“Here We Come A-Wassailing” (Traditional English)
When my nieces were younger and I still lived in Dobbs with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, the girls would converge on Aunt Zell’s kitchen the Saturday before Christmas the instant they could persuade a parent to drive them into town. More than once I had groggily answered a six a.m. phone call to hear a small voice ask, “Can I come now, Aunt Deb’rah?”
Annie Sue, Herman’s youngest child, was nine the chilly December morning that Uncle Ash opened the door to
