hand or
kissed my cheek or pressed oddly folded dollar bills into my purse until it was
overflowing, despite my best efforts not to let them.
Grandma's casket was closed, and the
picture they'd chosen to loom large above it must have been taken almost fifty
years ago. She looked like an angel, her hair a gentle cloud around a face so
bright and luminous that the features seemed to linger on your retina once you
glanced away.
I was struck once more by how little
I knew her, and even before everyone told me how much I looked like here, I
could see it.
Eventually, once the festivities were
winding down and I was reaching the limit of my endurance, Cade's reassuring
bulk appeared by magic as if I'd summoned him. I realized that he'd most likely
been watching me the entire time, gauging my reaction to the grief and the
forced joyfulness of the festivities that threatened to swirl around me for the
rest of night.
He handed me a cool drink with a
steady hand, and I took it from him gratefully. “What's this?” I asked.
He grinned and sloshed the one he had
in his hand at me, an identical liquid in a glass that ran with perspiration. “Mint
Julep. Thought you should be drinking like the locals, especially tonight.”
I took a hesitant sip, and the smile
that I felt spread across my face was the first genuine one I’d worn in too long
a time.
It was exactly what I needed. The
liquor burned a slow, almost sensual line of gentle fire down my throat as the
sweetness slid along behind to soothe my parched lips. All of a sudden I felt
like royalty, like a woman bathed in a life of decadence, sitting on a porch
watching the last of the sunlight splash across the fields and the grass, no
sound in my ears other than the lilting songs of evening birds and the clink of
melting ice cubes shifting in their glass.
“It's delicious,” I told him, and
when he swapped my empty glass for his full one, I wasn't about to protest.
After all, the funeral had become a wake, and if one isn't allowed to live a
little when celebrating the dead, what was the point of being alive at all?
Cade held out his arm to me and I
took it. “I had a feeling you'd approve.” The crowd parted before us as he led
me to the bar in the back, and those sitting on the stools got up and dipped
their gazes at me out of respect when they left us to ourselves.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I leaned
in and asked, hearing a coyness in my voice I hadn't really intended. I wasn't
really a drinker, and the warm glow of the drinks I'd already consumed weren't
taking long to loosen up a few of my inhibitions.
“Nope. Just giving you a breather. You
don’t have to stay the whole time, but there’s every chance that this thing is
going to go well past midnight, whether you like it or not.”
I nodded, suddenly realizing we were
sitting at a bar. In a church...
“I know,” he said. “Crazy, huh? This
close to the swamp, it's a whole different world.”
I was beginning to see that. I put my
purse on the stool beside me and reached inside. “How much are the Mint Juleps?”
I asked, fishing around for something to pay the bartender with. I certainly
wasn't drunk, but my fingers weren't fully cooperating, either. All I could
manage to do was grab a few of the folded dollar bills that people had been
sneaking in there all night.
The fire that blazed in Cade's eyes
when he saw what I was doing pulled me up short. “Are you crazy?”
“Huh?”
“Put those away.” He scooped them up
and pushed them back into my purse. “Don't fuck with what you don't understand,
okay?”
“Settle down,” I told him, wondering
what I'd done to earn his anger. “Relax, Cade. I'm not trying to disrespect
anybody.”
He shook his head, his jaw tight. “You
know, I've spent the last three hours with people coming up to me, begging for
an appointment with you. I've got a list as long as my arm of your
Grandmother's former clients, all of whom want a chance to sit across