Larceny and Old Lace by Tamar Myers Page B

eyes widened. She was always good at feigning astonishment.
    â€œMama, no! Of course not! I would never do such a thing. Not without getting married first. Jimmy sleeps out here on the floor. I sleep back there in the bedroom. Mama, really!”
    She had thrown me enough scraps to concoct the meal I desperately needed. I was momentarily grateful. It wasn’t as late in the game as it could be.
    â€œWell, dear, if you do decide to sleep with him—which I sincerely hope you don’t— please use protection. Promise me?”
    She nodded vigorously. “Oh, I will, Mama. If I ever do, I will. But I won’t, so I won’t need to.”
    There was little else to say. I was not emotionally prepared to sit down on Jimmy’s mattress and have a pleasant chat. First, I would have to sleep on what I had just seen and heard. Maybe hibernate for a winter or two. Susan should thank her lucky stars that her daddy was too busy, or selfish, to pay her a visit unless forced. I certainly would do nothing to force Buford out there until I had thought things through thoroughly.
    I hugged her. She smelled like male sweat.
    â€œAunt Eulonia’s funeral is the day after tomorrow. Two in the afternoon at the Church of Our Savior in Rock Hill.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll come if the car can make it.”
    I refrained from asking her if that was the better car Jimmy had talked her into buying. That conversation could wait. It was worth biting a small piece of my tongue off just getting out of there without a major confrontation.
    â€œI love you, Susan.”
    The quick nod from her was a reciprocal declaration I’m sure.

7
    I am ashamed to say I hadn’t been to Aunt Eulonia’s house in over a year. Okay, so it was almost three years, but I had a lot of water rush under my bridge in those three years. Tweetie made a big splash in my life. In fact she almost drowned me. Of course, I can’t put all the blame on her—Buford was twice her age and should have known twice as much. Factor in their relative IQs and Tweetie comes out almost innocent.
    Don’t give me that crap about the home fires being out and that’s why Buford went looking. My furnace was roaring when Buford decided to trade it in for a newer model, whose pilot light has yet to be lit. Who knows, maybe Buford couldn’t take all that heat. And don’t even suggest that the furnace was rusted on the outside and in need of cosmetic repair. I weigh exactly the same as I did the day I was married, and my various parts are within an inch or two of their starting positions. How many other forty-six-year-old women can make the same claim?
    So what does Tweetie have that I don’t have? Blond hair? Bigger boobs? A firmer butt? I could have bought all those things if I had wanted to be someone other than who I am. The only thing she has, that I can’t buy, is a pair of legs that stop at the armpits.
    Well, I seem to have digressed, which, in a way, is exactly my point. If Buford’s affair makes me this mad now, imagine what it did when I first found out. I didn’t know one could hate that much. Or hurt that much. And speaking of pain, Ican’t begin to describe the depth of the abyss I fell into when Buford won custody of our children. I am still climbing out.
    And that’s why I hadn’t been to Eulonia’s in almost three years. I had, however, seen her at Mama’s house on holidays, and of course I’d see her professionally from time to time. Like before she dropped out of the Selwyn Avenue Antique Dealers Association.
    September in Charlotte is not yet autumn, and the only leaves that have fallen have been whacked out of the trees by errant baseballs and clumsy birds. Aunt Eulonia’s street is overgrown to begin with, and I may as well have been bivouacking in the jungles of Southeast Asia. As a woman living alone, I should carry a purse-size flashlight with me at all times—perhaps I