Waking Up in Dixie Read Free Page B

Liam, but it was Friday—payday at the chicken plant—so Mama would be bringing home a case of beer with the weekly groceries. Maybe Daddy would pass out before he got mad, this time.
    “Ya gotta look after your own self,” Jacob cautioned, then headed for the pool hall.
    “Merry Christmas,” she called after her brother.
    Jacob just shook his head in disapproval and kept on going, his shoulders hunched against the cold wind.
    “Merry Christmas,” she repeated, to herself. Hands fisted in the pockets of her secondhand coat, she turned toward the library.
    She could find another tree. And this time, she’d hide it where Daddy wouldn’t find it.

Chapter 3
     
    The present: Whittington, Georgia
     
    Two Sundays before Christmas, Elizabeth knelt in the pew beside Howe and prayed for help to forgive him for his greed and lack of love, then went through the motions of the service by his side, as she had for more than a quarter of a century.
    When it came time for the sermon, Elizabeth settled back and tried to look interested, though she knew the message would be anything but. Father Jim’s sermons had been dry as melba toast lately.
    Men of the Whittington family had been falling asleep—sitting up—in the second pew of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church since their ancestors had built the place in 1793, and Howe was no exception. So Elizabeth took little notice when he went rigidly still beside her while their aged minister made a thready connection between the daily Epistle reading and the topic of global warming.
    Her mind wandering, Elizabeth tuned out the priest’s monotonous delivery, suppressing a sigh. Normally, she accepted the humdrum of her weekly routines with gratitude—she’dhad enough drama the night of the party to last her for quite a while—but on this particular Sunday, the minister got on her last nerve.
    She looked across the aisle to see her mother-in-law focused on the priest as if he were delivering the Word of Heaven straight from God Almighty, which only annoyed Elizabeth more.
    Father Jim was a kind man, but wholly ineffectual, and clearly out of ideas for his homilies. The man needed to retire, and that was all there was to it. Unless St. Andrew’s got somebody livelier, the Baptists would end up with all the young people.
    The Baptists might just end up with
her
—a thought that made Elizabeth smile, even though she knew she’d never dare. Her mother-in-law would disown her for sure, and there was already no love lost, no matter how hard Elizabeth had tried to win the woman’s approval.
    As the sermon meandered on, Elizabeth discreetly opened her purse and glanced down at her pocket calendar to review the upcoming week: Women’s Club tomorrow; bring her strawberry flan.
    Errands and shopping in Atlanta on Tuesday, as usual, and lunch with P.J. They hadn’t seen each other since before the party, so she was looking forward to it even more than usual. Her ego really needed a boost. She wanted to tell P.J. what had happened at the party.
    Nobody knew Elizabeth had been seeing P.J., and nobody needed to.
    It was all innocent enough. She’d bumped into him a couple of times back in September on her regular Tuesday shopping trips to Phipps Plaza, and they’d chatted about their old highschool days over lunch at Maggiano’s, hitting it off immediately. P.J. lived and worked nearby, and they both loved the restaurant, so they’d fallen into splitting the huge servings every week, but lunch was all it was. Elizabeth wasn’t about to risk her reputation with anything more.
    Even so, people might not understand that the relationship was strictly platonic. On her part, anyway.
    As the minister droned on, she focused back on her calendar. Sewing Circle Tuesday night—or “whine and cheese” as some of the husbands called it, where she offered sympathy, but never breathed a word about her own sterile marriage or friendship with P.J.
    Altar Guild Wednesday; remember to pick up the altar