A Bone To Pick

neck. “John and your mother are still on their honeymoon?”

“Yes, they’re having such a good time I wouldn’t be surprised if they stayed longer. My mother hasn’t taken a vacation in at least six years. You know she owns a real estate business.”

“That’s what John told me,” Aubrey Scott said politely. He was still standing right inside the door.

“Oh, I forgot my manners! Please come have a seat!” I tossed my purse on the counter and waved at the matching tan suede love seat and chair in the “living area,” which lay beyond the “kitchen area.”

The chair was clearly my special chair, from the brass lamp behind it for reading light to the small table loaded with my current book, a stained coffee mug, and a few magazines. Aubrey Scott wisely chose one end of the love seat.

“Listen,” I said, perching opposite him on the edge of my chair, “I’ve got to tell you why I’m so giddy today. Normally I’m not like this at all.” Which was true, mote’s the pity. “Jane Engle just left me a bunch of money, and, even though it may sound greedy, I’ve got to tell you I’m happy as a clam about it.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said sincerely. I have noticed that, if there is one thing ministers are good at projecting, it is sincerity. “If someone had left me a bunch of money, I’d be dancing, too. I had no idea Jane was a-that Jane had a lot to leave anyone.”

“Me either. She never lived like she had money. Let me get you a drink. Coffee? Or maybe a real drink?” I figured I could ask that, him being Episcopal. If he’d been, say, Parnell and Leah Engle’s pastor, that question would have earned me a stiff lecture.

“If by real drink you mean one with alcohol, I wouldn’t turn one down. It’s after five o’clock, and conducting a funeral always drains me. What do you have? Any Seagram’s, by any chance?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. What about a seven and seven?”

“Sounds great.”

As I mixed the Seagram’s 7 with the 7 Up, added ice, and even produced cocktail napkins and nuts, it finally struck me as odd that the Episcopal priest would come to call. I couldn’t exactly say, “What are you doing here?” but I was curious. Well, he’d get around to it. Most of the preachers in Lawrenceton had had a go at roping me in at one time or another. I am a fairly regular churchgoer, but I seldom go to the same church twice in a row.

It would have been nice to run upstairs to change from my hot black funeral dress to something less formal, but I figured he would run out the back door if I proposed to slip into something comfortable.

I did take off my heels, caked with mud from the cemetery, after I sat down.

“So tell me about your inheritance,” he suggested after an awkward pause.

I couldn’t recapture my initial excitement, but I could feel a grin turning up my lips as I told him about my friendship with Jane Engle and Bubba Sewell’s approach after the service was over.

“That’s amazing,” he murmured. “You’ve been blessed.”

“Yes, I have,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

“And you say you weren’t a particular friend of Jane’s?”

“No. We were friends, but at times a month would go by without our seeing each other. And not thinking anything about it, either.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve had enough time to plan anything to do with this unexpected legacy.”

“No.” And if he suggested some worthy cause, I would really resent it. I just wanted to be in proud ownership of a little house and a big (to me, anyway) fortune, at least for a while.

“I’m glad for you,” he said, and there was another awkward pause.

“Was there anything I could do to help you, did your note say?…” I trailed off. I tried to manage a look of intelligent expectancy.

“Well,” he said with an embarrassed laugh, “actually, I…this is so stupid, I’m acting like I was in high school again. Actually… I just wanted to ask you out. On a date.”

“A date,” I repeated blankly.

I saw instantly that my astonishment was hurting him.

“No, it’s not that that’s peculiar,” I said hastily. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“Because I’m a minister.”

“Well-yes.”

He heaved a sigh and opened his mouth with a resigned expression.

“No, no!” I said, throwing my hands up. “Don’t make an ‘I’m only human’ speech, if you were going to! I was gauche, I admit it! Of course I’ll go out with you!”

I felt like I owed it to him now.

“You’re not involved in another relationship at the moment?” he asked carefully.

I wondered if he had to wear the collar on dates.

“No, not for a while. In fact, I went to the wedding of my last relationship a few months ago.”

Suddenly Aubrey Scott smiled, and his big gray eyes crinkled up at the corners, and he looked good enough to eat.

“What would you like to do? The movies?”

I hadn’t had a date since Arthur and I had split. Anything sounded good to me.

“Okay,” I said.

“Maybe we can go to the early show and go out to eat afterward.”

“Fine. When?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Okay. The early show usually starts at five if we go to the triplex. Anything special you want to see?”

“Let’s get there and decide.”

There could easily be three movies I did not want to see showing at one time, but the chances were at least one of them would be tolerable.

“Okay,” I said again. “But if you’re taking me out to supper, I want to treat you to the movie.”

He looked doubtful. “I’m kind of a traditional guy,” he said. “But if you want to do it that way, that’ll be a new experience for me.” He sounded rather courageous about it.

After he left, I slowly finished my drink. I wondered if the rules for dating clergymen were different from the rules for dating regular guys. I told myself sternly that clergymen are regular guys, just regular guys who professionally relate to God. I knew I was being naive in thinking I had to act differently with Aubrey Scott than I would with another date. If I was so malicious or off-color or just plain wrongheaded that I had to constantly censor my conversation with a minister, then I needed the experience anyway. Perhaps it would be like dating a psychiatrist; you would always worry about what he spotted about you that you didn’t know. Well, this date would be a “learning experience” for me.

What a day! I shook my head as I plodded up the stairs to my bedroom. From being a poor, worried, spurned librarian I’d become a wealthy, secure, datable heiress.

The impulse to share my new status was almost irresistible. But Amina was back in Houston and preoccupied by her upcoming marriage, my mother was on her honeymoon (boy, would I enjoy telling her), my co-worker Lillian Schmidt would find some way to make me feel guilty about it, and my sort-of-friend Sally Allison would want to put it in the paper. I’d really like to tell Robin Crusoe, my mystery writer friend, but he was in the big city of Atlanta, having decided the commute from Lawrenceton to his teaching position there was too much to handle-or at least that was the reason he’d given me. Unless I could tell him face- to-face, I wouldn’t enjoy it. His face was one of my favorites.

Maybe some celebrations are just meant to be private. A big wahoo would have been out of line anyway, since Jane had had to die in order for this celebration to be held. I took off the black dress and put on a bathrobe and went downstairs to watch an old movie and eat half a bag of pretzels and then half a quart of chocolate fudge ripple ice cream.

Heiresses can do anything.

It was raining the next morning, a short summer shower that promised a steamy afternoon. The thunderclaps were sharp and scary, and I found myself jumping at each one as I drank my coffee. After I retrieved the paper (only a little wet) from the otherwise unused front doorstep that faced Parson Road, it began to slow down. By the time I’d had my shower and was dressed and ready for my appointment with Bubba Sewell, the sun had come out and mist began to rise from the puddles in the parking lot beyond the patio. I watched CNN for a while-heiresses