Cop Town Read Free

night?”
    “Peachy.” Lilly cupped her fingers across her forehead in a salute to the page. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. The chestnut brown fell somewhere between Delia’s mousy brown and Maggie’s darker hue.
    “Peachy sounds good.” Maggie put a plate by Lilly’s elbow. She bumped her with her thigh. “What’re you studying?” She bumped her again. Then again. When Lilly didn’t respond, she sang the opening lines from “I Feel the Earth Move,” punctuating each pause with a bump.
    “Stop it.” Lilly tilted her head down even more. Her nose was practically touching the book.
    Maggie leaned over to set the other side of the table. She glanced back at Lilly, who had been staring at the same spot on the page since Maggie walked in.
    Maggie said, “Look at me.”
    “I’m studying.”
    “Look at me.”
    “I have a test.”
    “I know you stole my makeup again.”
    Lilly looked up. Her eyes were lined like Cleopatra’s.
    Maggie kept her voice low. “Baby girl, you’re beautiful. You don’t need that stuff.”
    Lilly rolled her eyes.
    Maggie tried again. “You don’t understand what kind of message wearing makeup at your age sends to boys.”
    “I guess you should know.”
    Maggie rested her hand on the table. She wondered when her sweet kid sister had learned how to throw daggers.
    The kitchen door swung open. Delia’s hands and arms were lined with platters of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and biscuits. “You’ve got two seconds to wash that shit off your face before I get your father’s belt.” Lilly bolted from the room. Delia banged the platters down on the table one by one. “See what you’re teaching her?”
    “Why am I—”
    “Don’t talk back.” Delia dug a pack of cigarettes out of her apron. “You’re twenty-two years old, Margaret. Why do I feel like I have two teenagers under my roof?”
    “Twenty-three,” was all Maggie could say.
    Delia lit the cigarette and hissed out smoke between her teeth. “Twenty-three,” she repeated. “I was married with two kids when I was your age.”
    Maggie resisted the urge to ask her mother how that had worked out.
    Delia picked a speck of tobacco off her tongue. “This women’s lib stuff works for rich girls, but all you’ve got going for you is your face and your figure. You need to take advantage of both before you lose them.”
    Maggie smoothed together her lips. She imagined a lost-and-found box in the back of a storeroom with all the missing faces and figures of thirty-year-old women.
    “Are you listening to me?”
    “Mama.” Maggie kept her tone even. “I like my job.”
    “Must be nice to do whatever you like.” Delia pressed the cigarette to her mouth. She inhaled sharply and held the smoke in her lungs. She looked up at the ceiling. She shook her head.
    Maggie guessed it was coming sooner than she’d thought. Her mother was shuffling the deck before laying down the Bad-News Card: Why are you throwing away your life? Go to nursing school. Be a Kelly Girl. Get some kind of job where you’ll meet a man who doesn’t think you’re a whore.
    Instead, Delia told her, “Don Wesley was killed this morning.”
    Maggie’s hand went to her chest. Her heart was a hummingbird trapped beneath her fingers.
    Delia said, “Shot in the head. Died two seconds after he got to the hospital.”
    “Is Jimmy—”
    “If Jimmy was hurt, do you think I’d be standing here talking about Don Wesley?”
    Maggie took a mouthful of air, then coughed it back out. The room was filled with smoke and cooking odors. She wanted to open a window but her father had painted them all shut.
    “How did it …” Maggie had trouble forming the question. “How did it happen?”
    “I’m just the mother. You think they tell me anything?”
    “They,” Maggie repeated. Her uncle Terry and his friends. They made Delia look downright forthcoming. Fortunately, there was an easy way around that. Maggie reached inside the stereo console to turn on