Then there’s Nadine, my brother Herman’s wife, who belongs to a strict fundamentalist church and has never quite approved of me. “Of course, you can’t wear white, but there’re lots of pretty dresses in off-white.”
“Oh, nobody worries about stuff like that anymore,” said April, my brother Andrew’s third-time-lucky try at marriage.
Aunt Zell, my mother’s sister, couldn’t stop beaming. “Now I know you have Sue’s silver, crystal, and china,” she said, “so why don’t I give you a linen shower?”
“And I’ll do lingerie,” said Portland Brewer, my best friend and prospective matron of honor despite her advancing pregnancy. (Some of my brothers were making book on whether or not she’d deliver before the wedding.) “Black satin teddies. Red silk panties!”
“Kitchen goods!” said Mae and Doris.
“Well, what about ol’ Dwight?” said their husbands. “Maybe we oughta give him a tool shower.”
“So romantic,” sighed my nieces. “All these years of catting around with other guys, then bang!” They had taken to singing parodies of “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” every time they saw me.
Maidie, Daddy’s longtime housekeeper, was writing out family recipes for my edification and Dwight’s well-being; while John Claude Lee and Reid Stephenson, my cousins and former law partners, were talking about a formal announcement dance at the Colleton County Country Club in Dobbs.
Dwight’s mother, his two sisters, and his sister-in-law had already booked a luncheon date at the University Club in Raleigh for all the women in both families.
Even Daddy. He didn’t say much, but his blue eyes twinkled whenever someone mentioned the wedding.
Dwight just laughed and took it all in stride.
I was starting to freak.
“They act like this is the love match of the century instead of a sensible arrangement,” I told Minnie.
Minnie is married to my brother Seth. She’s also my campaign manager. It was Minnie who advised me that it would be politically expedient to quit looking for the moon and settle down with someone respectably earthbound instead. She was surprised as hell that I’d taken her advice and as pleased as the rest that the someone turned out to be Dwight Bryant.
“Won’t hurt you at the polls to be married to a well-regarded deputy sheriff like Dwight,” she said, but when she started cooing like our nieces, I immediately disillusioned her.
“Romantic love has nothing to do with this,” I told her. “It’s pure pragmatism. Sure, we’re fond of each other, but it’s love based on friendship and mutual history, not romance. He’s as tired of channel surfing as I am, so it just makes sense.”
“Oh, honey,” Minnie said, looking bereft. “No real passion?”
“I didn’t say there was no passion,” I told her, unable to repress a grin.
“Well, thank goodness for that much,” she said, smiling back.
“But it’s turning into a three-ring circus. Even at the courthouse. Clerks go out of their way to stop me in the halls and tell me how nice Dwight is. Like he’s got a halo and they don’t think I’m good enough for him. It’s bad enough that Aunt Sister and Nadine and Doris think like that, I don’t need it at work, too. Paul Archdale even had the nerve to ask me if I was letting personal considerations color my judgment when Dwight testified against his client this afternoon.”
“Were you?”
“Of course not,” I huffed. “Paul knows his client’s guilty as sin. He was just trying to get a lighter sentence. I may be thinking about marrying Dwight, but that doesn’t mean I’ve quit thinking.”
“Dwight’s ring on your finger means you’re more than just thinking about it,” Minnie said gently.
We both glanced down at the ring, an old-fashioned square-cut diamond flanked by two smaller stones. I pulled it off and balanced it on the palm of my hand, where it gleamed and shot out sparks of color in the sunshine.
“I don’t know, Minnie. I’m beginning to think this marriage is going to cause more problems than it’ll solve.”
“No, it won’t,” she soothed. “You and Dwight will be good for each other, and it would embarrass him to death if you back out now, so you put that ring right back on your finger where it belongs. A lot of people care about both of you, so the two of y’all getting together’s bound to be a nine-days’ wonder. They’ll settle down once they get used to the idea.”
“Another week?” I asked glumly. “I don’t know if I can take it.”
Happily, I didn’t have to.
That very evening, there was a message from Roger Longmire, Chief District Court Judge in our district. When I returned his call, he said, “Got anything sensitive or pressing on your calendar?”
“Not that I know of,” I told him.
“Good. I’ve been asked if I could spare someone to hold court up in Cedar Gap.”
“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.