“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bernie said. “I meant to get in there and make you some more space. It’s taken me longer to get over this injury than I’d figured.”
“No problem,” I said. There was a hook on the outside of the closet door, so I hung my bag there rather than cram it in and wrinkle my dress.
“What’s the matter with your neighbor?” I said, my mind suddenly leaping back to my previous source of misgiving.
“Jim Collins? Oh, he’s such a grouch,” she said with a half smile. “Why do you ask? Was he giving you a mean look when you came in?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t pay any attention,” she said. “He’s just a lonely man since his wife died, and he was a big friend of Don’s. Don helped him out in the yard all the time, and they went fishing together. He’s blaming me for all Don’s problems.”
That seemed a strange way to refer to Don’s being in jail for shooting her. “Jim Collins hates you,” I said.
She gave me a very strange look. “That’s a lot to read into a look across the yard,” Bernie said. “Don’t worry about Jim, Sookie. Let’s go get you some ice tea.”
So Sam hadn’t told his mom that I could read minds. Interesting.
I followed Bernie down the short hall and into the kitchen. The kitchen was quite a bit larger than I’d expected, since it also encompassed an eating area set in a bay window. Deidra was sitting at the big round table with Mindy’s little girl, Bonnie, in her lap. The child was holding a soggy cookie and looked quite happy. Through the bay window, I saw Mason and his dad in the backyard playing catch with Craig and Sam. I went to the door and looked out at the family scene. When he saw me, Sam darted an inquiring look my way, to ask if I was okay. He was willing to come in if I needed support.
I smiled at him, genuinely pleased. I nodded reassuringly before I turned to the table. There was a pitcher of tea and a glass filled with ice ready for me. I poured my tea and sat down beside Deidra. Mindy had put a laundry basket full of clean clothes on the kitchen counter, and she was busy folding them. Bernie was drying dishes. I’d thought I might feel like an intruder, but I didn’t.
“Sookie, you’re the first girl Sam’s brought home in years,” Mindy said. “We’re dying to know all about you.”
Nothing like cutting to the chase; I appreciated the direct approach. I didn’t want to lie to them about our relationship, but Sam had brought me here to deflect the wedding fever. I would have felt worse if Sam and I hadn’t been genuinely fond of each other. After all, I told myself, I was literally Sam’s “girl friend,” if not his “girlfriend,” so we were more bending the truth than breaking it.
“I’ve worked for Sam for several years,” I said, picking my words carefully. “My mom and dad passed away when I was seven, and after that my grandmother brought me and my brother up. Gran died a couple of years ago, and I inherited her house. My brother lives in my parents’ house,” I added, so they’d know that was fair. “I graduated from high school in Bon Temps, but I never got to carry my education any further than that.”
This Sookie-in-a-capsule got a mixed reception.
“Is your brother married?” Mindy asked. She was thinking of her own brother who was getting married, and the possibility of another grandchild to make her mother happy. Bernie was going to get one sooner than Mindy imagined.
“He’s a widower,” I said.
“Gosh,” Deidra blurted, “people in your family don’t have a long life expectancy, huh?”
Ouch. “My parents died in a flash flood,” I said, because that was the public story. “My grandmother was murdered. My sister-in-law was murdered. So we never got to find out how long they would live.” Actually, they’d all been murdered. I’d never put it to myself like that before. People in my family really, truly had a short life expectancy. If I followed the family trend, I could expect to meet my end through violence in the not-too-distant future.
I glanced at the appalled faces of Sam’s womenfolk, who’d gotten more than they’d expected. Guess they wouldn’t be asking me any more personal questions, huh? “But my brother’s still alive,” I said brightly. “His name is Jason.”
They all looked relieved. Deidra grabbed a napkin and began dabbing at Bonnie’s smeared face. “Bonnie, you have a chocolate mouth,” Deidra said, and Mindy and Bernie laughed while Bonnie stretched her mouth into a wide grin, enjoying the attention.
“How big is your family, Deidra?” I said, to get off the topic of my life.
“I got two sisters,” Deidra said. “I’m the oldest. They’re seventeen and fifteen, still in high school. And I’ve got two brothers, both older. One brother works here in Wright, and one brother’s in the army.”
“How about you, Bernie? Do you have any younger brothers or sisters?” I asked Sam’s mother, to keep the conversational ball rolling.
“Oh, they have to be younger? I must be showing my age.” Bernie turned a wry face to me. She was stirring something on the stove.
“You have to be the oldest, if you’re the shifter.”
Then they were all looking at me, this time in surprise. “Sam did tell you a lot,” Mindy said. “Humph. He doesn’t usually talk much about his heritage.”
“I’m not sure if I heard it from Sam or from a werewolf,” I said.
“Unusual,” Bernie said. “Have you dated other shifters?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “And my brother’s a bitten panther.”
There was another round-robin of exchanged glances among the women, broken by Bonnie demanding to go potty. Mindy stopped matching socks to sweep her up and carry her off to the hall bathroom.
“So you have no problem with wereanimals at all,” Bernie said.
“No,” I replied, and I’m sure I sounded as surprised as I felt.
“We just figured . . .”
“What?”
“We just figured,” Deidra said, “that your family wouldn’t like the idea of you marrying into a shifter family, like my family didn’t. I mean, they’ve come around now, but when they saw the woman change on television, they freaked out.” The two-natured, following the vampire pattern, had sent their most personable representatives to local television stations to change on the air.
Don hadn’t been the only one who’d reacted with panic.
“If I had a big family, there might be more of a problem. But my brother wouldn’t mind me marrying into a family with the shifter gene,” I said. “He’s all I’ve got to worry about.” And I wasn’t any too worried about his opinion. “Not that I have any plans to get married,” I added hastily. I hadn’t even planned on getting married in the vampire way, for that matter. “Are you going to wear the traditional white dress, Deidra?” I had a doomed feeling that no matter how I tried to keep the conversation on the actual wedding about to take place, the women of the family were going to continue to steer it toward a possible future match between Sam and me.
The bride nodded, smiling. Gosh, Deidra was a dentist’s dream. “Yeah, it’s pure white and strapless,” she said. “I got it on sale at a bridal shop in Waco. It was worth the drive.”
“How many bridesmaids?”
A cloud crossed her face. “Well,” she began. After a perceptible pause, she tried again. “Two,” she said, smiling for all she was worth. “My sisters.”
“Two of her friends backed out after the shooting,” Bernie said, her back to us. Her voice was flat.
Mindy had come back into the kitchen with a scrubbed daughter, and she let Bonnie out into the backyard with the men. “Incoming,” she yelled, and shut the door. “Bitches,” Mindy said abruptly, and I knew she was referring to the bridesmaids who’d reneged on their obligations.
Deidra flinched.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but that behavior was low,” Mindy said. “Any true friend would be thinking more about you and your feelings than about their disapproval of our family.”
Mindy had good sense.
“Well, you still got the two best ones,
” Bernie said, and Deidra smiled at her mother-in-law-to-be. “Sookie, I hope you like baked chicken.”
“I sure do,” I said. “Is there anything I can be doing to help?”
Bernie said no, and I could see that the cooking area would be easier for one person to manage without a newcomer getting in her way. To keep the conversation going, I told them about having to step in at the Bellefleur double wedding when one of the bridesmaids had had a sudden attack of appendicitis. They all laughed when I described trying not to breathe in the too-tight dress or move too quickly in the too-small high heels, and I began to feel a little more at ease. Mindy finished folding clothes, Bonnie came in crying with a skinned knee, and Craig accidentally threw the ball over Doke’s shoulder and into Mr. Collins’s backyard.
In the background, I’d heard the men’s voices as they called to one another and to Mason, and I was alerted when they all fell silent. I listened.
Then I was out the door and looking to my right. Jim Collins was standing there at a gap in the overgrown hedge, his balding head shining under the sun, the baseball in his age-spotted hands. I knew what he was going to do before he did it; I knew it as his intent formed. Collins was in his sixties, but hale and fit, and the ball went right toward Sam with impressive force. My hand shot out to intercept it. It stung like hell, but I would not have winced for all the cotton in the Delta. I caught Collins’s gaze and held it. I didn’t let myself speak. I was afraid of what I’d say.
There was a long moment of silence. Mindy’s husband, Doke, took two steps forward. He told Collins, “Don’t think about acting out in front of my son.” Doke was so angry he had to exercise all his restraint.
At that moment, I wished I were a witch so I could throw Bernie’s neighbor’s malevolence back at him. But I didn’t have any superpowers or any supernatural powers, or any kind of power at all. All that I had that was mine was my unpredictable ability to read minds and my unexpected strength and quickness, which came from taking the occasional sip of Eric. My arm dropped to my side, the ball clenched in my fist, and Sam came over to put his hand on my shoulder. We watched Jim Collins, still expressionless, turn to go back into his house.
“Was he trying to hit me?” Sam asked quietly.
I was too angry to speak. I turned my head to look into Sam’s eyes. I nodded.
“Thanks, Sookie,” he said. “That would have been bad. Maybe I could have caught it in time. Maybe not.” Sam was very, very quick, like all twoeys—but he’d been caught off guard.
“I only moved quicker because I knew about it ahead of time,” I said, leaving Eric and his blood out of the conversation. “That creep wants to provoke you. I hope none of the rest of your neighbors are like him.”
“They never used to be,” he said, his voice bleak. “Now it’s hard to tell.”
“To hell with them,” I said. “You-all are good people, Sam. There’s nothing wrong with you and your mother, except maybe your mom didn’t pick her second husband too well.”
I could hear the other men going into the house, Mason’s piping voice exclaiming over my good catch.
“Mom understands that now,” Sam said. “I think it never occurred to her that Don would be so angry about her other nature, because she was so sure he loved her.”
Time to change the subject. “Your mom’s fixing chicken,” I said. “Oven baked, with Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs.”
“Yeah? She’s a pretty good cook.” Sam’s eyes brightened.
“I don’t know how we’re all going to squeeze in around that table.”
“I’ll get the other card table out of the closet. We’ll all make it.”
And we did. No one mentioned Jim Collins again, and no one asked me any questions about what I’d done. The Merlottes (extended version) seemed to be a clan that accepted the odd without a blink . . . at least, they did now.
It was a long evening after a long day, and I was ready to retire when the dishes were done and Deidra had departed to her parents’ house. Mindy and Doke had left for home soon after supper was eaten so they could bathe the kids and get them to bed. The next day, Saturday, would hold both the wedding rehearsal (in the morning) and the wedding itself at four in the afternoon, followed by a reception. All three events would be at Deidra’s church.
Craig made a point of having a conversation with me while I was washing dishes and he was drying them. He told me that the reception would be only a punch and cake affair, which is often the case in the South. “We made up our minds too quick to do anything else,” he said with a smile. “After Deidra’s folks—the Lisles—kicked up a fuss and postponed the first date and made us go to counseling, we didn’t want anything to get in the way of this one. We don’t care about having a sit-down dinner. Punch and cake is fine with us, and a lot cheaper.”
“Where will you live?” I asked. “In Dallas? Sam said you-all went to college there.”
“I took an apartment in Houston after I graduated,” Craig said. “I got a job doing tech support for a big firm of CPAs. Deidra’s got to finish training as an EMT.”
I assumed she’d have to put that off because of the pregnancy, but it was none of my business to say anything.
“She’d really like to become a physician’s assistant, after we get on our feet,” he said.
“I hope she can do that,” I said. Deidra would have a hard row to hoe, with a new husband and a new baby.
“What about you?” Craig asked.
“And my future?” I actually had to think about it. Craig and I were alone in the kitchen. Sam had gone outside to move his truck because it had been blocking Deidra’s car. Bernie was in the bathroom.
“I’ve got a good job working for this really nice guy,” I said, and Craig laughed. I hesitated. “Maybe I’ll take some online courses. I don’t do well in classroom situations.”
Craig was silent for a few moments. He was thinking he could tell I wasn’t dumb, so what could my problem be? Maybe I had ADD, or just a total lack of ambition? Why hadn’t I advanced further in life?
Though I felt a flash of resentment, I realized that Craig naturally wanted his brother to be dating a girl who had some goals and aspirations. It was hard to resist showing off, trying to impress Craig with my one unique ability.
For example, I could have told him that I knew he’d recently quit smoking at Deidra’s request and that right now he was craving a cigarette. Or I could have told him that I knew he and Deidra were going to be parents. Or I could have told him that my boobs were real, which would have answered another unspoken question.
When you opened yourself up and stayed in a person’s head for more than a second, you could really pick up on a lot of stuff.
Analyze what you’ve thought of in the last few minutes. Would you want anyone else to know about it? No. Sam had asked me once if I thought I could do a good job for Homeland Security. I tried to imagine how. Standing in an airport by the search line? Would any bomber or terrorist be going over his plan mentally, in detail, in an airport chosen at random? No, I thought not. I’d have to have a little more direction than that.
I wanted to discuss this with Craig, as I’d wanted to say it to so many people in the past. I’d often wished that other people understood my daily path, understood what I lived with. Not that I wanted to act all whiny and put-upon—“Poor Pitiful Pearl,” as my grandmother used to call me when she thought I was in danger of being sorry for myself.
I sighed. It wasn’t Be Kind to Telepaths week, and I had better tighten up my suspenders and get on with my life. I told Craig good night and took my turn in the bathroom when it was empty. It felt good to shower away the long day, and I belted my robe around my waist and emerged with the bundle of clothes I’d removed.
Sam was waiting by the door to my assigned bedroom. He looked tired but relaxed, and I could tell he was happy to be at home. He stood aside to let me enter first, and I put my clothes down on top of my tote bag and straightened up to find him looking at me with af
fection. Not lust, not frustration . . . affection. My heart went all gooey. We hugged, and it felt wonderful to breathe him in. He didn’t mind the damp hair, the bare face, the worn bathrobe. He was happy I was here. He stood off a little, though he didn’t entirely let go. “Thanks for coming with me, Sookie,” he whispered. “And thanks for defusing that situation with Mr. Collins.” Sam thought Jannalynn would have sprung over into the old man’s yard and given him a shellacking. He seemed to believe that the problem with his mom’s neighbor was over. I didn’t know what to say to him. I decided, I should let him sleep well and be happy. Tomorrow is the wedding.
“No problem,” I said. “I’m glad my softball training came in handy.”
Sam went to the doorway. “I’m down there, in my old room,” he said, jerking his head toward a door on the other side of the hall and down a bit. “Craig’s in there with me. Mom’s at the end of the hall.”
I started to ask him why he’d told me, but then I realized I did indeed feel better knowing where he’d be in the night.
“You going to call Eric?” he said, almost inaudibly.
“I may try,” I said. “He’d probably appreciate it.”
“Tell him . . . Nah, don’t tell him anything.” Sam was not a big fan of the Northman. “I was going to say, ‘Tell him thanks for letting you come,’ but you can go where you damn well want to.”
I smiled at Sam. “Yes, I can, and I’m glad you know that.” Over his shoulder, I saw the door at the end of the hall open just a crack, and I could see Bernie’s eyes peering at us. Sam gave me a little grin, and I knew he could tell we were being observed. I winked at Sam with the eye away from Bernie, and I kissed him. It wasn’t long, but it was warm. There was a look in Sam’s eyes when we let go of each other, a look that let me know he might’ve enjoyed putting on a much longer show for his mom, but I laughed and stepped back.
“Night,” I said, and shut the door. I heard Sam’s steps move away, and I fished my cell phone out of my purse. “Hey, you,” I said quietly when Eric answered. Bernie would surely have the sharp shifter hearing.