The Sookie Stackhouse Companion Read Free

watching out for him, and I’m probably just jealous.”
    I could read his mind enough to know he wasn’t being entirely truthful—but he did sincerely want me to feel better, and he was truly sorry I was upset. “You’re right,” I said, though my voice wobbled in a pathetic way. “Sam, you’re absolutely right. I’ve made so many mistakes.”
    “Don’t we all? I’ve made more than a few, and I don’t seem to stop making them,” Sam said, and there was bitterness in his voice.
    “Okay. We’re both human; we got that settled,” I said, making myself smile. “Or, at least, we’re mostly human.”
    He laughed, and I felt better. I rummaged around in my purse for a Kleenex and patted my eyes carefully to keep my makeup intact. I got a Coca-Cola out of the ice chest behind Sam’s seat and popped it open for him, and got myself one, too. We talked about the sorry season the Bon Temps Hawks baseball team was having, and I told Sam about watching the softball team practice the week before. I felt good when I was confident everything was back to normal between us.
    When we stopped to get gas outside Dallas, I watched a black Ford Focus shoot by. “That’s funny,” I said to Sam, who was punching his PIN into the pump. “That’s the same car I saw when we pulled over to find out what that noise was.” A branch had caught under the truck and had been making an alarming whap-whap-whap .
    Sam glanced up. “Huh,” he said. “Well, the interstate is always busy, and the Focus is a popular model.”
    “This is the same one,” I said. “There’s a place on the driver’s side of the windshield where a rock hit.”
    Then I went inside the station to visit the ladies’ room, because I could tell Sam didn’t want to be worrying about a Ford Focus. I didn’t, either, but there it was.
    I kept a sharp eye out for the car after that, but I didn’t bring up the subject again. As a result, we made pleasant conversation past Dallas and Fort Worth, all the way to the turn off the interstate that would lead us south to Wright.
    I’d offered to drive, but Sam said he was so familiar with the route that he didn’t mind being at the wheel. “I’m just glad to have company making the drive, for once,” he said. “I’ve had to go over to Wright so often since the announcement.” Sam’s mom had had a huge crisis the evening of the big two-natured reveal, broadcast worldwide; her second husband had been so startled by the fact that his wife could turn into an animal that he’d shot her.
    “But you’ve got the one sister and the one brother,” I said.
    “Yeah, Mindy and Craig. Mindy’s twenty-six. She’s married to Doke Ballinger. She went to high school with him. They have two kids, Mason and Bonnie. They live about thirty miles away in Mooney.”
    “What’s the name of the woman Craig’s marrying? Daisy? Denise?”
    “Deidra. She’s from Wright, too. She and Craig have both been going to UT Dallas. She’s a real pretty girl, only nineteen, and Craig’s twenty-four. He went into the army before he started college.”
    “Lots of military service in your family.” Sam and Craig’s dad had been retired army.
    Sam shrugged. “Because of Dad, we’re all used to the service as an option. It’s not a huge leap like it is for some families. Craig always liked Deidra, but when he was in high school, she was way too young for him to think about as a date. He did call her when he found out another kid from Wright was going to UT Dallas, and he says they were gone on each other after the first date.”
    “Aw. That’s so sweet. I guess all this trouble has been really hard on them.”
    “Yeah. Craig was pretty mad at me and Mom for a while, and then he accepted it, but Deidra’s folks freaked out. The wedding got postponed a couple of times.”
    I nodded. Sam had told me how his brother’s fiancée’s family had reacted to the news that her about-to-be mother-in-law sometimes ran on four feet.
    “So