The Major's Wife (Jubilant Falls series Book 2) Read Free

, we sometimes dodged stories for the sake of keeping an advertiser, but with Traeburn’s slow death, there weren’t many advertisers to piss off, and the staff, that is, everyone except me, was taking on more sacred cows and more big stories in an effort to show readers we were truly worth appearing on their evening doorstep.
    I just covered the fluff, the goddamn, worthless fluff of debutante balls at the Jubilant Country Club. What were they so jubilant about? That anyone whose skin happened to be a little darker could only hope to enter as a waitress or janitor, or whose name ended in -berg or -stein could never hope to play golf, except as a guest? Not that there were any Jews in Jubilant; the population was overwhelmingly white here, although some of the larger farmers had begun transporting Mexican migrant workers from Texas for the planting and harvest seasons.
    God, I hated this town. I hated every empty Traeburn smoke stack, every hungry face, and every dirty child. If you weren’t one of the Swedish or Scot or Irish immigrants who originally populated Plummer County, you came up from the poverty of Appalachia with the hopes that Traeburn would give you the false security of a job on the line.
    Then, division after division, Traeburn had cut production. The combine division went first, then the small lawn tractors, all slowly disappearing, until every convenience store clerk and janitor had a story to tell about how life was when they were making $20 an hour welding the rear transaxle on some agricultural behemoth.
    Jubilant Falls' unemployment doubled from the national average, and the county's infant mortality rate skyrocketed. Ironically, it seemed only the farmers and the folks who worked at Symington had any economic security.
    I thought of a woman who was widowed when McNair Machine Tool fired her husband three weeks before his retirement. She had come home to find him hanging in the garage. She settled out of court, according to police reporter John Porter who did the story, but scuttlebutt in the newsroom was that someone had gotten to her, pushing her to take a measly settlement.
    I hated my beat most of all, only because it glorified the small island of wealthy families who controlled Jubilant Falls. Living on the north side of town in what Jess scornfully called McMansions, ensconced in their country-club dances and their flashy cars, they held poetry readings and debutante balls while hunger and unemployment ran rampant through the town.
    Through an accident of birth, Kay was part of that.
    She had tried to escape it, throwing herself into causes of one kind or another. Apartheid was big for a while; after her divorce, it was battered women, abortion rights, then protesting American intervention in South American banana republics. She never stuck with them long enough to see them through. She had her mother's money to fall back on, although the relationship between the two women was far from cordial.
    Kay and I still dated sporadically, after she turned down my proposal. I knew she was stringing me along until someone better came along, but I couldn't let her go.
    Then came the day when she waltzed into the newsroom, saying that she met a pilot with the call sign of Bear, stationed with the test wing at Symington.
    "He's such a big man, he says he can hardly fit into the cockpit, and that's why they call him that," she had gushed, the wild blue shining in her eyes.
    "Huh?"
    "Marcus, he's just so wonderful. A real hunk," she had babbled. "His name is Paul Armstrong."
    "Sounds wonderful. Good-looking, courageous, tall, everything I’m not…and a frigging all-American hero to boot."
    "Stop it."
    Two weeks later, the phone rang. It was Kay.
    "What are you doing Friday night?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. I could hear her fingers drumming on the kitchen counter in the background. Scarlett was never happy, unless she had a beau nearby.
    "Anything you want, my dear."
    "Dinner? Movie? What sounds