In the Midnight Hour Read Free

home with strict instructions to rest.
    “You keep working yourself to death, you’re going to get old before your time, sugar.”
    “I’m already old.” Or at least older. At twenty-six, she had at least four years on most of the other seniors at USL. While an accounting degree only took four years, Ronnie didn’t have the luxury of going full-time. She’d had to work full-time during the summers and part-time throughout college to meet school and living expenses.
    “You’re one step out of the womb, sugar,” Delta had told her. “Take a look at me.” The woman had frowned, emphasizing her sun-browned face carved with dozens of laugh lines. “Sixty-four years’ worth of wrinkles—and all from catching catnaps in the library lounge when I should have been in my own bed sound asleep.”
    That had been enough to send Ronnie straight home.
    Her first class was at eight in the morning, and although she still had to jot down a few extra notes on her term paper topic for Professor Guidry’s human sexuality class, she could drag herself up an hour early to do it. She refused to think of anything tonight but a little R&R.
    Determined to ignore the nagging guilt that prompted her toward her book satchel, she stabbed the remote control button and found a music video channel. Humming with the song, she retrieved another slice of pizza. No stress-induced hallucination was going to rob her of the pleasure of a double cheese and pepperoni.
    She hadn’t had a really good pizza pie since she’d left her hometown of Covenant and her friend Jenny, the daughter of the town’s one and only pizza parlor owner. Friends since kindergarten, Ronnie and Jenny had gone through school and puberty together, despite Ronnie’s father, who’d never approved of the friendship. Jenny had been a wild child, the product of a divorce, and a bad influence, according to Mayor Parrish.
    Oddly enough, Jenny was the one married and settled in Covenant with a husband and two toddlers, while Ronnie was here, a hundred and fifty miles away in Lafayette, still single, sitting in a messy efficiency she didn’t have the time or the energy to clean, nursing a pizza smack dab in the middle of a bed that belonged in one of those Enhance Your Love Life catalogues advertised in the back of Cosmo or Vogue .
    If only her folks could see her now.
    She nibbled on her pizza slice. Her mother would turn every shade of red. Her father would probably have a heart attack. He’d definitely issue a statement claiming Ronnie’s behavior was due to an accidental drop on the head as a child rather than her upbringing.
    Not that Ronnie had to worry about either. They wouldn’t see her, because traditional Mayor Parrish and his lovely wife wouldn’t visit their nontraditional daughter. Ronnie had traded marriage and a family for late-night study sessions and student loans, her role as dutiful daughter for that of political liability.
    And, of course, she’d made the choice publicly. In front of a church full of people gathered to watch her marry the man of her father’s dreams, Raymond Cormier, the town’s chief of police and one of her father’s staunch supporters.
    She took another bite of pizza and flipped through a couple of television channels, finally settling on an old black-and-white movie.
    On-screen, Shirley Temple hugged her long-lost father. A sense of loneliness washed through Ronnie.
    Despite her differing views and their bitter parting, she missed her parents. There was a lot to be said for living at home. She’d had three solid meals a day, no bills hanging over her head, and two people who loved her, even if they were painfully conservative. At least she hadn’t been alone.
    Then again, there was also a heck of a lot to be said for independence, regardless of all its responsibilities and worries. She ate and slept when she wanted. Wore sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers instead of the awful, “feminine” dresses her Aunt Mabel had made for her.