Wave Good-Bye Read Free Page B

to use the ladies’ room.” And walked away.
    I sank down onto the floor and buried my head in my hands.
    What had I done?

Chapter Three

WHEN MOM CAME OUT, HER PUFFY RED EYES ANNOUNCED that she’d been crying. That got me all shook up, because my mother isn’t the crying type. When my dad died of pancreatic cancer, leaving her a young widow with two small daughters to raise and no particular education to speak of, she grew a backbone of pure steel. She’s also a paragon of practicality, a woman who believes that when life gets tough, you pull up your big girl panties and work a little harder. Given all she’s been through, she’s pretty hard to rattle.
    Walking over to the appointment book, she ran a finger up and down the listings. “Hmm. Grace Ann, we’ve only got two people coming in tomorrow. I know you have plans. Why don’t you take Saturday off? You, too, Rachel.”
    “Sick! Totally sick!” said our shampoo girl.
    I translated for Mom. “She means she’s thrilled. I am, too.”
    Althea opened the cabinet by her workstation and grabbed her car keys. “Since I don’t have anything in the appointment book, I think I’ll hit the highway and see y’all on Monday. Kwasi’s taking me out to eat at that new barbecue place, then we’re going to the football game. After that, he’s going to read to me from a new textbook he’s working on.”
    Dr. Kwasi Yarrow was six years younger than Althea, but his gravitas made him seem older. He was a professor, and he wore an air of self-conscious intellectualism around him the way most men wear cologne. Of course, he drove a Prius, watched CNN, and read the Atlantic Monthly . I don’t think Althea was attracted to him for his looks, although he wasn’t a bad-looking man. Althea described her beau as “passionate,” and I would add after seeing him in action with a student group that he was also persuasive.
    The tall African American woman picked up her purse, a mesh sack that Kwasi told her was hand-woven elephant grass made in Ghana. It looked exactly like ones they were selling at South of the Border, that kitschy tourist place on the state line between Georgia and North Carolina. Althea stored her bag on one of the upper shelves because Beauty liked to use it as a scratching post. The design on the front was already missing two beads, and Beauty had been happily batting at something small and round earlier this morning.
    “A textbook he’s writing?” I stopped wiping down the baseboard. “Sounds exciting.”
    “What of it?” Althea stiffened and gave me “the look.” I’ve seen grown men quake in their Nikes when she levels those powerful tractor beams on them.
    “I’m just sayin’,” I backpedaled.
    “What are your plans for the weekend, Grace Ann? You and Marty going to the bonfire and the big game? Especially since you’ve got tomorrow and Sunday off?” Althea raised an eyebrow. This was a direct challenge, and I knew it. Althea and Mom both thought I was nuts for putting up with Marty’s erratic schedule and vague promises. Last weekend, we were all set to spend a romantic couple of days in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, when he called at the last minute and cancelled. “Big, big story,” he said, but he was eating at the time, so it sounded more like, “Ig, ig, ory.”
    “Naw, I’m not much of a football fan.” The real reason I wasn’t going is that I refused to show up at the festivities without a date. This summer we had our ten-year reunion, and I was depressed for days. Seeing all my high school friends married with kids reminded me that the clock was ticking. For years I’d kept my desire to have children a closely guarded secret. After my failed marriage with Hank Parker, I acted like being a career woman was exactly what I wanted. Of course, pretending got a lot harder when Alice Rose married Wade Willard in a beautiful June ceremony. My baby sister and Mom spent months planning every intricate detail of the wedding, down