Southern Discomfort by Margaret Maron Page A

that thought to himself.
    "Why, Herman Knott!" exclaimed Nadine, clearly surprised. "You still worrying about that after all these years when you know good and well that wasn't your fault?"
    "Who's Mary Dupree?" Annie Sue and I asked.
    "Tink Dupree that owns the Coffee Pot's mother."
    The Coffee Pot is next door to Herman and Nadine's office. It's only open for breakfast and lunch, but half the town walks in and out between six and two. Herman stops off there for a cup of coffee every morning and I think Nadine takes her midmorning break there. It's a family business—Tink and his wife, Retha, and their daughter, Ava—but I didn't remember seeing his mother.
    "Happened about ten years ago. During that time you lived off," said Herman. (All my brothers walk gingerly around that patch of wild oats I'd sown back then.) "Tink and Retha were working at the Coffee Pot, but they didn't own it then."
    "Didn't have two nickels to rub together," Nadine said, stirring more sugar into her tea.
    "His daddy used to work on the base at Fort Bragg and one night they were driving back down to Fayetteville and got in a bad wreck. It was raining and he run off the road and got killed. His mama got banged up so bad she had to come up to stay with Tink and Retha while her leg healed, Tink being their only child and all."
    Annie Sue was waiting impatiently to hear what Tink Dupree's mother had to do with wiring the WomenAid house, but Mo-Cat rearranged his bulk on my lap so I could stroke his other side for a while.
    "Won't enough room in that old house to cuss a cat without getting hair in your mouth," said Herman, "so they give Ava's room to Miss Mary and they made a little attic room for Ava. It was around Thanksgiving, so that worked out okay as far as it being warm enough up there. Heat rises. She'd've burned up if it'd been summer. But they figured either Miss Mary'd be back in her own house by then or that they'd just build 'em on another room if they needed to. Ava won't happy about having to move, of course, and she pitched a fit to have her hair dryer and her stereo and all the other stuff girls think they've got to have."
    Annie Sue rolled her eyes again. I knew what Ava Dupree looked like now, and now I remembered hearin how she got that way; but Herman was so deep into his tale that, like the Ancient Mariner, he was constrained to finish.
    "Tink got me to come in and show him how to add another circuit for the attic. That fuse box of his was so old and rusty, I told him right off I didn't feel good about adding anything else to it. But he kept on and on at me, swore it had to be done or Ava wouldn't give him no peace, promised they'd be careful about overloads, and then said he was going to do it whether I helped him or not. The long and short of it was that I told him how it could be done and I give him a good price on the stuff to do it with, but I said not to come blaming me if his house burned down—never for a minute thinking it would."
    "And he didn't," Nadine said loyally, —cause it wasn't your fault."
    "So you say and so says Tink." Herman set his empty glass back on the tray. "But every time I look at the scars on Ava's face and arms—every time I think of Miss Mary dead in that fire— Well, I know and Tink knows, too, who bears half the blame."
    "If I recall," I said, "it was her insurance policy that gave Tink the money to buy the Coffee Pot?"
    "That and selling her mobile home down in Fayetteville," said Nadine. "The insurance wasn't supposed to be all that much but it paid double because of the way she did die. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, doesn't he? Miss Mary used to fret about Tink and Retha living hand to mouth and then she was the cause of them getting the Coffee Pot. I thought they did a real good job fixing Ava's face, don't you? You can't hardly tell she was ever in a fire at all."
    "Mother!" Annie Sue was appalled. "You look at her arms and her hands!"
    "Well that's her own choosing. Retha says