Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

should make a day of it. That’s what I did with my daughter—DiAnn’s mother. Sharon and myself and Sharon’s future mother-in-law. Of course when DiAnn married Paul, we completely put on the dog.”

“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know how, exactly, you were related. I mean, I knew she was your granddaughter, but …”

“Sharon is my oldest. Her brother Aaron is my youngest.”

I let the family trivia sink in to stop thinking about my own. “So … two children?”

Her face fell. “No,” she said. “There’s one in the middle. Buford Henry Knight II to hear my late husband say it. Biff to everyone else.” She took a deep breath through her nose, then shook her head. “My son took off right after his father died. Right after he discovered that, no, he was not taking over the pharmacies nor was he getting a dime of his daddy’s money.” She pointed to her chest with a manicured nail. “That was my inheritance.” She smiled then, albeit a forced one. “But enough about my children, dear one, especially that one. Do you feel better now?”

I nodded through a giggle. “I do.”

Westley’s head came around the doorjamb. “Safe to return?” he asked, stepping in as if on cue.

“Yes,” I said, standing and walking to him. He put his arms around me, the safety of them wrapping me like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

“Good,” he said, again placing a kiss on top of my head. “Because there is a delicious-looking red velvet cake and some piping hot coffee in the front parlor. Which is good because I just stepped outside, and I’d say the temperature has dropped about twenty degrees since we got here.”

“Well then,” Miss Justine said, reaching the two of us, “it’s a good thing you have each other to keep yourselves warm.”

Chapter Eleven

The rain let up.

After red velvet cake and coffee, Westley and Miss Justine and I stepped outside into the cooler but wet-blanket air and into our hostess’s Lincoln Town Car, then drove several streets over to a neighborhood of picture-perfect cookie-cutter houses, each one flanked by fat oaks and swaying pines and each one painted a different color from the rest. “It’s like a village of doll houses,” I said, my nose pressed against the back-passenger’s window. I turned to Westley and grinned. “I love it.”

“These homes were built back in the 1940s,” Miss Justine supplied as she turned the long-nosed car into the driveway of a house painted carmine red and trimmed in winter white. The front windows boasted window boxes devoid of flowers but, beneath them, a line of fat boxwoods. From the driveway, I could see that the backyard had been outlined with a white picket fence. Two steps led to the small front porch where a painted-white wooden bench perched near the door. A red-, white-, and black-striped pillow angled along with a few potted plants gave the area a “come and sit” feel. I immediately felt that I would.

“The 1940s?” Westley asked.

Miss Justine put the car in park, turned the key, then shifted so she could look at us in the rearview mirror. “Charming as they can be. Tiny, but charming. Hardwood floors—pure oak—and recently updated with lovely wallpaper and chair railing in many of the rooms.” She pulled the key from the ignition. “Ready to see?”

I nodded. “I know I am,” I said.

“Let’s do it,” Westley said.

Within a few minutes, the three of us had walked through the small, square rooms, each one more enchanting than the next. “It’s like an English cottage,” I said when we had returned to the living room. I crossed my arms against the chill in the house. “But without the thatched roof.”

Westley tweaked my nose. “What do you know about English cottages with thatched roofs?”

I shrugged. “I saw a movie once—my sister and I—that was filmed in England. There were thatched-roof cottages everywhere in this village.” I chuckled as my eyes roved around the living room—painted in burnt orange and trimmed with wide baseboards, crown molding, and chair railing, all painted in warm off-white. “And that’s what this reminds me of.”

“What do you think of the furniture?” Miss Justine asked.

I told her it was fine because it was. Not new, like she said, but certainly presentable. “I can purchase some pillows,” I said pointing to the orange tapestry sofa that seemed to stretch for miles. Then, looking at its matching chair, I said, “And maybe one of Mama’s afghans to throw over the chair.”

“Sounds lovely,” Miss Justine said as I stepped into the adjoining dining room.

“And I’m sure we’ll have some lovely pieces from our showers to show off on the sideboard in here,” I noted.

“Now, the kitchen,” Miss Justine noted as she brushed past me and into the next room, “could stand some modernizing, but it has a dishwasher so thank the good Lord for that.”

I peered in at the tiny square room that barely had enough counter space for a bowl, a pot and a pan, which hardly mattered given my cooking skills. And when I said so, Westley laughed behind me and quipped, “There’s your excuse when it comes to my question of what’s for dinner.”

I turned and poked him in the ribs, and then, as he pretended injury, walked back into the living room and on into a small hallway where two bedrooms jutted off—one to the left and the other straight ahead—and a bathroom to the right.

I stepped into the front bedroom—the larger of the two—once again crossing my arms, taking in the maple-finished bedroom set, the floral bedspread with its tiny matching pillows—one round, one square—and the thick shag throw rugs cast on both sides of the bed. Late afternoon sunshine had broken through the lingering rain clouds and headed through the double window flanked by curtains matching the bedspread. The light shot straight to the bed, illuminating the place where, finally, Westley would hold me in his arms without restraint. My brow rose in anticipation, remaining there