Julia Hotchkiss reached for the last three hush puppies, blissfully unconcerned with her guilty secret.
After lunch, I left them to pack for points unknown and drove back to Danville—with nothing to think about but the other civil war in my life. MacPherson vs. MacPherson in divorce proceedings. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I wondered if I would prove any better than Abe Lincoln at preventing a secession.
“Well, here we all are,” I said brightly for the tenth time. I was smiling like a neon sign. I could feel every muscle in my face. “Here we are.” I glared at Bill, mentally nudging him to say something positive, because I could feel my words falling with a crash into the center of this silent, strained family reunion. Our parents were in Bill’s apartment, summoned at our request, politely sipping tepid white wine out of jelly glasses and behaving like hostages who were determined to be civil to their demented captors.
“Yep!” Bill caught my glare and straightened up with a nervous start. “Here we are,” he chirped, flashing our parents an oafish grin, which they returned with plaster smiles.
They wouldn’t look at each other. They sat as far apart as it is possible to get in the hamster cage that Bill calls a living room. Mother passed the time between sips by asking me carefully neutral questions about Cameron, and how things were in Scotland. She seemed determined to consider Dad a large, quaint piece of sculpture that she refused to comment on. Dad resembled a guilty schoolboy who has been hauled to the principal’s office for a well-deserved whipping: determined to brazen it out by feigning indifference. Meanwhile my brother the host, to whom housecleaning is an unconfirmed rumor, kept offering to run out to the store for everything from napkins to crushed ice, but I knew better than to let him act on these alleged impulses of hospitality. He would run out to the store, all right. Probably to one in the next state, and he would contrive to prolong the errand until he could be sure his guests had fled. I wasn’t about to be left holding this unsavory bag.
So there we were, all of us absolutely miserable, but determined to do a wooden impersonation of a normal family. In my fifth-grade history class we read the story about the little Spartan boy who put a fox cub in his tunic on the way to school, and then sat quietly through his lessons while the captive beast gnawed at his belly until the boy keeled over dead. That lad’s spiritual descendants are my immediate family—and almost the entire population of my adopted country—and I am as exasperated about it as the fox was!
It was evident that my Waspish middle-class family members considered themselves far too well-bred to indulge in shouting matches or other forms of honest, but unseemly behavior. If left to their own devices, they were perfectly capable of making innocuous small talk for the entire interminable evening, while the real issues seethed below the surface, unexpressed, but tormenting everyone. Now, my life among the stiff-upper-lip crowd in Britain had not exactly enhanced my ability to advocate plain-speaking, but the knowledge that my stay in the United States was limited compelled me to introduce a little reality into the proceedings. I couldn’t afford to wait out the months that would elapse between innuendo, ironic aside, inter-family conferences, and finally the reproachful understatement of a by-then-insoluble problem. I had a plane to catch.
In a lull just after Dad’s monologue about the Cincinnati Reds and Mother’s last question about the weather in Edinburgh, I said, “Look, folks, this is a charming family reunion, and I really appreciate your coming over to welcome me back, but could we stop shoveling the—the social pleasantries here and talk about what’s really going on?”
Just for a fraction of a second they glanced at each other. Then after one of those little pauses, reminiscent of the silence between the lighting of the fuse and the instant of detonation, Mother said, “What is that, dear?”
“You told her about the separation yourself, remember?” said Bill. “And I told her everything else. Even the goldfish injunction.”
Mother looked thoughtful. Finally she gave a little shrug, smiled, and said, “We have always tried to shield you children from any unpleasantness. I suppose, though, that you are no longer children.”
“I was your attorney,” Bill reminded her.
“Look,” I said, hoping to forestall any embarrassing speeches about people drifting apart or the male mid-life crisis. “I’m sure that if you two find a qualified marriage counselor, you can work out whatever little problems are causing all this fuss.”
“Problems?” said Daddy in that gruff voice he uses when he’s annoyed. “We don’t have any problems. We have simply decided to go on with our lives. You children are grown, so you are no longer a consideration in our staying together. So we decided to please ourselves.”
“You certainly did,” said Mother, with more than a touch of sarcasm.
“I’m seeing someone,” Daddy muttered.
I think I said “Oh.” I must have—because my mouth was in exactly that round shape that it forms when you say oh, except that I forgot to close it for quite some time afterward. I must have been mentally flipping through Redbook articles, trying to come up with an appropriate response. Finally I stammered, “Well, of course. You’re at the dangerous age, aren’t you, Daddy? Fear of mortality and all that. I’m sure the counselor will cover all that. I mean, you couldn’t be seriously considering leaving Mother—”
Nobody said anything.
“And if marriage counseling is expensive, then I’d be happy to pay for the sessions,” I said gently. “I can’t stand by and see Mother’s heart broken.”
My mother chuckled.
Bill and I looked at her suspiciously. “Don’t worry about me, you two. I don’t want him back,” she said.
“What?” we cried.
“Oh, for years I’ve been thinking that once you children were launched safely into the world, I’d be free to do what I want to do. Until now I’ve spent all my life being told what to do by some man. First there was Dad. Then I married Doug when I was too young to know who I wanted to be. Since then I’ve been a den mother, a bridge partner, a housekeeper, a wardrobe consultant, a chauffeur—but I got lost in the shuffle. Now I want to be Margaret, not Doug’s wife or Bill and Elizabeth’s mother. I suppose I wouldn’t have had the courage to try life on my own, but when Doug had his hormone attack with that sweet young thing”—she giggled—“I decided that I was entitled to start over, too.”
“She’s just saying that,” said Bill. “She doesn’t want any of us to worry.”
“I don’t mind if you worry,” Mother replied. “I certainly worried enough about you two when you were growing up. Since you seem to be concerned, I’ll tell you that I’m going white-water rafting on the New River next weekend with Troy Anderson. I met him in my karate class at the community college.”
“Karate class,” Bill echoed.
“We’ll be all right, kids,” said Daddy, looking disgustingly cheerful. “But if you two need any counseling sessions to get over the trauma of your parents’ divorce, I’ll be happy to foot the bill.”
Sarcasm is a very irritating habit. Unfortunately it runs in our family. It practically gallops. There seemed nothing left for me to do but return to Scotland, where my wonderfully unsarcastic husband was waiting.
My parents left after that. Daddy said he had dinner plans; Mother murmured something about expecting a phone call. Bill and I looked at each other across the table of half-full wine cups and shrugged.
“Well, we tried,” said Bill. “And Mom is right. We are grown. Powell Hill tells me that the state has dropped the investigation. The law firm is solvent. I guess I’ll be all right. And you have a husband and an inheritance, so you should be fine.”
“Fine?” I echoed. Honestly, men have no sense of values. “Where are we supposed to have Thanksgiving now? And who gets the Christmas tree ornaments? And what about the tin punch picture I made for them at camp? Don’t they care which one of them gets to keep that? Our whole history is being fragmented by a legal process.”
“So you are going to let them do this?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “Mother fired me, remember? I don’t think either of us can stop it. All we can do is try to stay close to both of them in their separate lives. And remember we’ve always got each other.”
He beamed at me like an earnest sheepdog, and I patted his hand. “I’m so glad you’re my brother, Bill,” I said. “And not my attorney.”
Don’t miss the exploits of Elizabeth
MacPherson, forensic anthropologist and
not-so-amateur detective in the novels of
Edgar Award-winning
author
SHARYN
McCRUMB.
Published by Ballantine Books.
SHARYN McCRUMB
HIGHLAND LADDIE GONE
Elizabeth MacPherson is having a rollicking good time at an annual Scottish festival when the loathed Colin Campbell is found murdered. Then a second murder silences everyone’s bagpipes for good. Enter Elizabeth, who will use her insatiable curiosity to find the killer and let justice prevail.
LOVELY IN HER BONES
When the leader of her archaeological dig is murdered, forensic anthropologist Elizabeth MacPherson finds herself on the case. It takes a second mysterious death to start a cauldron of ideas bubbling in her head. And when she mixes a little modern know-how with some old-fashioned suspicions, Elizabeth comes up with a batch of answers that surprises even the experts.
SHARYN McCRUMB
MISSING SUSAN
The unsinkable Elizabeth MacPherson is on a tour of England’s most famous murder sites with the cantankerous Rowan Rover, the tour guide who has been paid to murder an unsuspecting woman. No would-be assassin needs Elizabeth on his tail. And she will be there until the end of the tour or the completion of Rowan’s mission, whichever comes first.
PAYING THE PIPER
Elizabeth MacPherson is on an archaeological dig on a remote Scottish isle when several members of the team die under mysterious circumstances. Is the excavation cursed by the ancient dead or is something or someone more modern responsible? With her own life on the line, Elizabeth is determined to unearth the answer.
SHARYN McCRUMB
SICK OF SHADOWS
The very wealthy and eccentric Eileen Chandler is set to be married, but someone is willing to resort to murder to halt the impending nuptials. Eileen’s beloved cousin, Elizabeth MacPherson, is on hand for the ceremony, and Elizabeth is not amused. No one in the wedding party is above suspicion when Elizabeth sets out to unmask the culprit.
THE WINDSOR KNOT
Elizabeth MacPherson has a rather hectic summer in front of her. Between finishing her doctoral thesis and planning her impending wedding, she must solve the case of a man who has died twice. And if she can accomplish all this, she might just get to have tea with Her Majesty the Queen!
Also by
SHARYN McCRUMB
ZOMBIES OF THE GENE POOL
Jay Omega drives an old writer friend to an unusual science-fiction convention and finds himself parked in the middle of a murder case. Jay must separate science fact from fiction and unearth a killer with his own tale to tell.
IF EVER I RETURN,
PRETTY PEGGY-O
Long-gone friends and the casualties of war haunt Peggy Muryan, a folksinger hiding from her past. A threatening postcard and a mysterious disappearance force Peggy to turn to Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, who has skeletons in his own closet. Arrowood must come to terms with his own past as he tries to prevent Peggy from being murdered by hers.
FOGGY
MOUNTAIN
BREAKDOWN
And Other Stories
Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the first-ever collection of Sharyn McCrumb’s short fiction, is a literary quilting of old and new, humorous and heartfelt, offering award-winning works—and two stories never before published—contrasting mountain childhoods past and present.
SHARYN McCRUMB
FOGGY MOUNTAIN
BREAKDOWN
And Other Stories
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in your local bookstore.
BIMBOS OF THE
DEATH SUN
Winner of the Edgar Award
Bestselling fantasy author Appin Dungannon—well known for his mean-spirited insults and his towering ego—is the guest of honor at Rubicon, the annual science fiction and fantasy convention. When Dungannon gets done in, the real question isn’t so much whodunit as who wouldn’t?
SHARYN McCRUMB
Bimbos of the Death Sun
The Tenth-Anniversary Collectors’ Edition
Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in your local bookstore.
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