“I was just wondering ... people around here, like Ed and Vina ... do they know about you?”
Jack grinned. “I guess so. I’m not the type to say much about my personal life, but I’ve never bothered to keep it much of a secret either. I think folks in Faulkner County think I’m the way I am on account that my momma leaving and my daddy not knowing how to raise a girl. So I think they feel sorry for me.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that there’s anything to feel sorry for. Of course, given the choice, I guess I’d rather have them pity me than beat me up.”
“Have you ever thought of moving away?”
“I did move away for a while — went to college in Chattanooga, then vet school in Knoxville. But I love my farm, and I always knew I’d wind up taking over Daddy’s practice. Besides, it doesn’t matter if I live in a small town or a big town. Dykes turn any town into a small town.”
Lily laughed. “I think you’ve got something there.” She looked at her Timex. She had been gone a little over three hours. “Well, I’d better go inside. I want to be there when Mimi wakes up.”
“Okay, well, nice talking to ya. I’ll call you the next time I go to work on somethin’ other than pigs. I figure you’ve drawn your fill of pigs. And hey, maybe I’ll see you over at Honey’s next week?”
“Maybe so. Bye.”
Lily entered the living room to see Ben sitting on the sofa, bleary-eyed, still dressed in his T- shirt and boxers. Mimi was wide awake, playing a game that seemed to involve somersaulting over the reclining Mordecai while giggling a lot.
“She . . . woke . . . up . . . fifteen minutes . . . after you left,” Ben droned. His usually perfectly coiffed hair was as unruly as Mimi’s. “The first thing she said was, ‘Mama gone, B-Jack. Let’s play.’ And that’s what we’ve done, nonstop, for the past three and a half hours. God, taking care of a baby is, like, really tiring, isn’t it?”
“There’s a news flash.” Lily ran a hand through his spiky hair. “You go back to bed if you want.
I’ve got her.”
He trudged back to his bedroom, as if shell-shocked from the unaccustomed childcare.
“Mama!” Mimi stretched out her arms and hurried toward Lily at a tippy-toeing toddler run.
Lily scooped up her daughter and held her on her lap. “Guess what I did this morning, Mimi- saurus. I stuck my hand straight up a pig’s patootie!”
“Piggy tootie!” Mimi repeated, and collapsed in a fit of giggles.
CHAPTER 13
Lily had been a good girl all week. On Sunday, she had made the potato salad for yet another of the McGillys’ infernal family barbecues. On Tuesday, she had taken Granny McGilly to the optometrist in Callahan, even though she had gone on a five A.M. farm call with Jack that morning and so had gotten only five hours’ sleep. On Wednesday, she had even gone to aerobics with Sheila and Tracee again. All week, she had been nothing but a dutiful imitation wife, granddaughter-in-law, and sister-in-law. And she, for one, was sick of it.
Ben, Lily knew, was equally tired of playing the respectable small-town family man. This week, when he could have been spending time with Ken, he had been pressured to lunch with Big Ben and his Rotary Club pals, and he halfheartedly had joined in their witticisms about the demands of married life.
It was out of Lily and Ben’s exhaustion with “the demands of married life” that Lily’s idea for a
