Southern Fried Blues (The Officers' Ex-Wives Club) Read online

  “Get anything else good?” Jackson asked.

  “Craig and Maura got me textbooks. For my twenty-first birthday. You believe that?”

  “Good for your brain,” Jackson said.

  Louisa’s nose crinkled up all girly-like.

  “I’m sure they meant well, sugarplum.” Mamie patted Louisa’s hand. “And what did you get the birthday girl?” she asked Jackson.

  “Daddy’s old twenty-two,” Louisa said. “And he’s gonna take me hunting.”

  The Misses went wide-eyed and pale-faced. “Well,” Miss O said. “Bless his heart.”

  Yeah, he was thinking that move was about as smart as setting off a firecracker in the only outhouse for miles, but Louisa didn’t have much of Daddy’s.

  Jackson didn’t either, come right down to it, but he had memories.

  Louisa had Russ.

  Mamie gave his arm a squeeze. “Right nice of you,” she said. He felt an unfamiliar prickle in his eyes at the shiny gloss in hers. “He’d be right proud.”

  He planted a kiss on her weathered cheek. “Thanks, Mamie.”

  He stayed the rest of the weekend, even though it meant sitting through the fireworks with his dates.

  They weren’t bad to talk to or look at, but they were both sporting that look girls got when they started thinking about big white dresses and diamond rings.

  Made him right twitchy. But he treated them gentlemanly all the way through handing them back to the Misses.

  Louisa was more than hung over for her post-birthday breakfast, so Jackson made sure she was going to live, gave his excuses to Momma and Russ, loaded Radish up, and headed home.

  He had some apple pie waiting for him.

  But the closer he got to home, the closer he got to crossing that line to nervous. Wouldn’t have surprised him to walk into his kitchen and find his armadillo missing.

  He could hope, anyway. But he still found himself smiling over the way Anna had slung that label maker out of her bag like Miss Dolly whipped out her knitting needles. She’d looked downright adorable swinging that thing around, and the way her eyes went all dark had given him a few ideas he was best not having.

  Still, he found himself wondering how a guy fell out of love with something like that, if he was dumb enough to fall into it in the first place.

  Not his problem, though.

  Not like his kitchen was.

  If she’d left it a mess, wasn’t like he’d notice. Had a woman or two do a lot worse than he reckoned Anna Grace had the nerve to try.

  So when he and Radish got home, her giving him a look Mamie liked to call the stink-eye for making her endure both the noise at Louisa’s party and the drive, he gave his dog a rub behind the ears and strolled all casual through his mud room and into the kitchen.

  Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t sparkly clean countertops and neat little piles of screwdrivers and mismatched socks Anna probably thought didn’t belong in the kitchen. His cabinets and drawers were all labeled with surgically centered labels.

  Radish sat back on her haunches in front of the table, stink-eye getting stinkier. He rubbed a hand over his head. “Think I got the better end of this one, huh, girl?”

  He had half a mind to call up Anna and invite her to dinner to thank her, but once he talked the number out of Kaci, he’d probably have a heck of a time convincing Anna to let him pay.

  Crazy woman.

  He slid open the drawer next to the oven and found his hot mitts, just like the label said. It peeled off easy, no damage to the drawer. He added a bottle of wine to that dinner he’d probably have to play her another round of redneck golf for.

  She’d labeled every drawer and cabinet with exactly what he found in them. Except for one little surprise in the cabinet next to the fridge. He opened it up, expecting mixing bowls and small appliances, and came face-to-snout with his armadillo.

  Only scared him a little.

  Good thing Radish couldn’t tell anybody otherwise.

  He made to shove the armadillo in a corner, but then he got a better idea.

  Radish gave a sigh and padded into the living room. His dog’s way of claiming innocence. Pretty sure she threw a you’re too old for that, dummy in for good measure.

  Louisa was coming next weekend. She’d given him the armadillo for his twenty-first birthday. Didn’t matter where he was in the world, first thing she did when she came to visit was check on it. Once or twice she put a dress on it. The armadillo, he’d keep. The dresses went to the shop for grease rags.

  A note on the table caught his eye. Curious, he tucked the armadillo under his arm like a football and went to check out Anna Grace’s parting shot.

  The handwriting was about as symmetrical as he’d ever seen, and the note wasn’t half-bad either.

  Jackson –

  Your movers lost your silverware organizer. Also, it’s difficult to dry dishes with towels that are made of holes instead of cotton. I only mention it because I didn’t see any paper plates.

  Anna

  (JUST Anna)

  She’d probably stood about fourteen feet high and looked down her nose at that paper while she was writing the note, too.

  The lady might be strung tight, but she sure amused him.

  He crossed the kitchen to the fridge and deposited the armadillo in it front and center, right where it’d make Louisa scream like a girl the first time she went digging for his beer.

  That’s when he realized something was missing.

  Son of a biscuit. His apple pie was gone.

  Still, he felt his grin go a little wider. “Good for you, Anna Grace,” he murmured to himself. “Good for you.”

  Chapter Nine

  She made plans, and life changed her plans. So she planned to change her plans in anticipation of life, until the day she surrendered her plans to change her life.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  THWACK!

  A gust of cool air swept across Anna’s nose. She bolted upright in her desk chair. “Entropy at absolute zero is impossible.”

  “Can you leave that crap in the classroom?” Jules tapped her fingers on the blue binder she’d dropped on Anna’s desk. “Quarterly review. Customer. Need a slide flipper. For God’s sake, wipe your chin.”

  Anna swiped at her mouth. She worked her jaw around, wincing at an unfamiliar pain on her cheek. She gingerly fingered the abnormally smooth grooved skin. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.” Jules smirked. “You got some shift and caps lock on your face.”

  Anna rubbed at her cheek where she’d been laying on her keyboard. Thermodynamics would kill her yet. “Three more weeks,” she grumbled. Then finals, but at least she’d be done. She stood and had to grab her desk when her left leg refused to work. Apparently sleeping at her desk was bad for her face and her circulation. “I have a test tonight.” She fingered her skin again. “How bad is it for real?”

  “Pretty sure you don’t have to worry about anyone hitting on you today.”

  Like anybody in the office would try. Jules was the only one who still treated her mostly the same as she had before the divorce. Anna tested her weight on her leg. Getting better. “Is everybody else already there?”

  Jules leaned out the door. “Shirley’s not—no, wait, there she is. Yep, everybody else is ready.”

  Anna limped out of her cube, using the walls for support. Her leg tingled. “I seriously hate thermo.”

  “It doesn’t like you much either.” Jules grabbed the binder and stalked out of the lab.

  Anna gimped along behind her. “Some days I wonder how Brad puts up with you.”

  “Are you serious? Somebody has to kill those bloody rays of sunshine he’s always crapping out.” She grinned, still riding the newlywed high. It was like a happiness record for her. “But they do make him kinda cute, don’t they?”

  Anna winced. “If you say so.”

  “Hey, Brad Skyped with Rodney the other night. He said to tell you even cover
ed in Sprite, you’re still better looking than the goats over there. But he thinks they might sing better.”

  That wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as it should’ve been.

  They’d almost reached the conference room when Brad himself barreled around the corner, the receptionist jogging after him, insisting he didn’t have clearance to be in the building. His blouse was unbuttoned, and he hadn’t taken his hat off. His skin matched the gray camouflage of his uniform. The sheen of grief in his eyes and his uneven stagger sucked every bit of rightness from the hallway.

  Anna’s heart dipped to her toes then ricocheted up like it was on a bungee cord.

  Jules went pale. “Ohmigod,” she breathed. “Rodney?”

  He crushed her against him, raw pain twisting his face. He blinked rapidly over shiny eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was husky and cracked. “Fuckers got him with an IED.”

  “Is he—”

  “Gone.”

  Anna’s limbs turned to silly putty. She choked on the No! in her throat.

  Jules pounded a fist on Brad’s chest. “Shut up,” she said, her tone weak and watery.

  She needed to give them their privacy, but she couldn’t move. Any moment now, Brad would say Never mind, gotcha.

  Except he didn’t.

  He stood clutching his wife, trembling and shaking and gasping.

  Anna’s throat clogged and her chest ached. For Brad. For Jules. For Rodney. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry and her jaw was clenched too tight for her tongue to work right.

  Shirley stepped outside the conference room. She surveyed the lot of them, dismissed the receptionist with a flick of her finger, then gave Anna’s elbow a tug. Anna’s joints flexed, and soon she was inside the conference room, the door closed against Brad’s and Jules’s grief. “His brother,” Anna said. The words rolled past her lips, becoming more real as they lingered in the air.

  “Goddamned war.” Shirley’s eyes took on a gloss that disappeared in a blink. “You okay?”

  Anna wasn’t, but she nodded anyway.

  Shirley seemed to get it. “Good. We might not be out in the trenches ourselves, but they count on us to get ’em in and out of there. You know enough to brief the customer today?”

  Anna took a shaky breath. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Giving the quarterly briefing wouldn’t change Rodney’s fate, but this was something small she could do for Jules. And the presentation was normal, organized and color-coded, something tenuous and logical.

  Inconsequential in the grand scheme of life, but normal.

  When it was finally over, Jules and Brad were gone. Anna slipped outside for a hit of fresh air. The stench of boiled asphalt smacked her in the face instead. She took refuge at a picnic table beneath an umbrella in a small grassy area behind the building, then pulled out her phone. Three clicks later, it rang on the other end. “Dr. Vaughn’s office,” a cheery voice with a familiar Northern drawl said.

  “Hey, Trina, it’s Anna. Is Beth busy?”

  “I think she’s finishing up a filling. You want me to have her call you back?”

  “Yeah, that—” A lump clogged Anna’s throat. “No, actually, I need to talk to her now.”

  “Okay, hon, hold on one sec, okay?”

  “’Kay.”

  Anna tried deep breathing, but the humidity on top of the lump made her feel like gagging. Beth came on the line quickly, thank God. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  “I love you.”

  Beth’s surprised laugh rang through the phone. “You called me out of a filling for that? Can you give my kids lessons?”

  Anna pinched the bridge of her nose. “A friend of mine at work just lost her brother-in-law.”

  “Aw, honey. I’m sorry. That bites.”

  “So even though you’re not fighting a war, I want you to know I love you. You know. In case you get hit by a bus or something.”

  “I’ll watch out for buses. Promise.”

  “And falling space junk.”

  “Anna,” Beth sighed.

  “I’m serious. You never know when your time’s up, and I might never get another chance to tell you I’m glad you’re my sister.”

  “I’m glad you’re my sister too, but Tony’s not falling-space-debris lucky,” Beth said. “And if it makes you feel any better, you’re in my will.”

  Anna blinked at the woven metal tabletop, all neat and even and insignificant. If she’d let Rodney kiss her that night, would it have changed anything?

  “I’m joking, Anna-banana. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  She blew out a slow breath. She could do this. She could fake normal. “Take me out of the will. I don’t want your gerbil.”

  “You are such a dweeb. I really need to finish up this filling, but I can call you back in fifteen.”

  “I’m okay. Really. I just needed to hear your voice.”

  “I’ll come visit soon. I need a day without sniffing testosterone. Keep your chin up, okay?”

  She’d had enough practice lately.

  So she said good-bye to Beth and went on with her day. Because while the world had lost Rodney, Anna still had a schedule to keep.

  “HOW’D IT GO, SUGAR?”

  Anna dropped into the seat across from Kaci at Jimmy Beans that night as if her butt was carrying around the weight of the entire last week. Considering all the thermo knowledge that had evaporated out her ears during her test the last two hours, she should’ve weighed less than the chai latte Kaci had waiting for her.

  “It’s over.” She gestured to the cup. “What do I owe you?”

  Kaci sniffed and ignored the question. “I’ve got half a mind to march into ol’ grandpappy’s office and give him what for. Giving a test first class after a long weekend. Humph. I don’t know what I ever saw in that man.”

  Anna had a couple ideas. There were the potato guns and his penchant for discussing the ignition point of various substances, both turn-ons to Kaci. Plus, he’d retired from the service earlier than he’d wanted, to move across the country and try to win her back. But Kaci had Lance, and Lance had not only voluntarily gone into the training squadron to avoid deployments for Kaci, he’d also stood up to her mother. Considering Kaci’s stories of ol’ grandpappy flirting with her mother, Anna thought Kaci was better off with number two.

  Good for her, but Anna wasn’t ever doing a number two. Not given the way her post-divorce love life had gone.

  “You okay, sugar?”

  Kaci’s tone had that sympathetic note that tended to provoke lumpy throats and stingy eyes. But Anna swallowed both with her chai and met her friend’s eyes. “Thermo didn’t beat me the first time, it won’t beat me now.”

  Not what Kaci was asking, and Anna knew it.

  Kaci didn’t push. She simply waited while Anna let herself process what she’d been hiding from most of the day. Shirley had come through with a few details, the most comforting being that Rodney probably hadn’t felt a thing, but for the most part, Anna had shut Rodney and Brad and Jules out and coped by focusing on her test.

  But her test was over now.

  “He asked me for pre-war sex,” she finally said. “In case he never came back. And I shot him down. And now I keep thinking, what if he never found his last lay? He loved women. What if I was his last chance? What if he was flirting with me to make me feel better? What if I’d done the same for him? What if I’d stayed and kissed him and that changed everything in the rest of his life by the right number of milliseconds it would’ve taken to change his destiny? I don’t want to marry the guy, but I don’t want him dead either.”

  “Anna, if you kissed him, those little puffs of air missing from when you flew out of that parking lot might’ve been the ones settling out the pressure in the jet stream and keeping a tornado from exploding over New York City next week.”

  Right. And marriage was forever.

  Kaci reached over and squeezed her hand. “Sugar, you can’t butterfly-effect him back.”

  �
��But what if it all means I’m supposed to get hit by a bus tomorrow and never kiss another man in my life?”

  “You got a man you wanna be kissing?”

  Anna slunk back in her seat. “I don’t want to get married again.”

  “Kissing isn’t marrying.”

  “This is hardly appropriate. Look what happened to the last guy who tried.”

  Kaci clucked her tongue. “You’re sitting here telling me a man who loved women wouldn’t want us talking about you and men? Sugar, those uptight sensibilities of yours are about as right as a rainbow without the rain. You still got some time on this here earth. You gonna live it, or you gonna let it live you?”

  “I need to finish my classes and get my degree so I—”

  “Pshaw. You keep putting off living a full life during your todays, you won’t know fun tomorrows if they smacked you in the butt and called you honey-pie.”

  “English?” Anna sputtered.

  “Gotta find your balance, sugar.” Kaci slid an envelope across the table then plunked a small gold box of Godiva on top of it. That sly sparkle was back. “Speaking of, somebody thinks I’m nothing but your messenger girl.”

  Anna’s heart pittered in an unsteady rhythm. Bold, masculine handwriting spelled out Anna Grace on the back of the envelope.

  Kaci reached for her coffee mug. “What I hear, he ain’t so big on getting married either,” she said over-innocently.

  Anna fingered the ivory envelope. It was thick and soft. High quality. The pen marks were clear, no streaks or smudges. No obvious indents in the letters either.

  These days when Anna scribbled her name, she nearly went through the whole paper.

  “You gonna open that?”

  “What’s it say?”

  Kaci’s eyes went big, and she clasped a hand over her heart. “That there’s your mail.”

  “What’s it say?” Anna repeated with a smile at her friend’s feigned innocence.

  Kaci took a sip of coffee. “Can’t do your living for you, sugar. ’Sides, Lance wouldn’t let me have it till I left to come up here to meet you, and that didn’t leave any time to steam it open. Couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.”