Bet Your Bones Read Free

smacking her. Everybody had begged her not to drop out of school to get married and Dinah had urged her time and again to go back and finish her education. It wasn’t as if the Taliban was preventing her. And that barb about flirting touched a nerve. Did she think…?
    “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. I’m just kiddin’. You know I want you here ‘cause I love you. You’re the sister I never had.”
    Dinah relaxed a fraction. The things unspoken between them had made her touchy.
    The waitress arrived with two coconut shells filled with some kind of creamy goop with a yellow hibiscus floating on top.
    Claude Ann plunked a straw into the concoction and sucked down a long swig. “This drink is named after an extinct volcano here on Oahu. Seems Pele got chased by a pig god and one of her sisters sent Koko Head crater as a decoy to save her from being raped. Dippy, I know. But folks say dippy stuff all the time around here. Anyhow, this is Pele’s favorite drink.”
    Pele again. She seemed to have a grip on everyone’s imagination. Dinah took a tentative sip, expecting gin. It tasted like a coconut milkshake spiked with rum. Where liquor was concerned, it seemed that the goddess had catholic tastes. “A woman I met on the plane told me that Pele’s been cutting up rough lately. On the Big Island.”
    “Aw, just a few little jigglers. Sometimes you don’t even feel ’em.” Claude Ann added a spoonful of sugar to her Koko Head and stirred it in with her straw. “Earthquakes come in swarms, if you can believe it. Like wasps or hornets. It’s a baby volcano that’s still underwater off the southeast coast of the Big Island that’s causing ’em, but Xander says they’re harmless.”
    “I guess a volcanologist should know,” said Dinah, doubtful all the same.
    “He’s a volcanologist only part-time, really. This past year he’s spent most of his time workin’ on a major real estate deal. There’s not all that much land to build on in Hawaii and what there is of it is worth a fortune. When it sells, we’re gonna be Rockefeller rich.” She took a quick slurp and puckered her brow. “Are the Rockefellers still rich? Anyhow, Xan’s kept his hand in as a volcanologist because it gives him more credibility with the environmentalists and regulators.”
    “You’re moving awfully fast, Claudy. Shouldn’t you live together for a while and see if the infatuation lasts?”
    “I knew you’d say that. You’ve got what they call ‘trust issues’ on account of finding out at such a young age that your daddy was a drugrunnin’ skunk. It’s warped your faith in people.”
    Dinah and Claude Ann had been debating the cause and effects of Hart Pelerin’s supposed criminality since they were in the fifth grade. Dinah’s slant on her father had mellowed over the last year. Still and all, it was her experience that the capacity of human beings to lie couldn’t be overestimated. “How did you meet Xander? And where? At last check, there were no volcanoes in South Georgia.”
    “I didn’t write you, but Hank and I separated last summer. He made a big stink about wanting custody of Marywave and it took a while for the divorce to be final. In the end, the judge liked me best and Hank had to give me a whoppin’ big pile of cash. He had to take out a loan on the farm, which really honked him off, but my lawyer said I deserved half the marital assets and I got to keep the money the insurance company paid me after Hank’s car wreck for my loss of consortium. Anyhow, when the hoopla was over, I wanted to get as far away from Needmore as I could go where they still speak English. As soon as school was out, I hogtied Marywave and bundled her off to Maui. I met Xan when I went paraglidin’ off Haleakala and my feet haven’t touched the ground since.”
    Dinah felt the unromantic prick of skepticism. Just how whopping a pile had Hank coughed up and how recklessly had the gay divorcée been flaunting it? “Are you