Family Law, Gin Phillips [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

in her voice, it was surely justified because, really, how many deaths were caused by fallen logs each year? Then she brought Evan home to meet her parents, and eventually, after maybe the twentieth warning, he’d brushed a hand against Caroline’s elbow and said, “So tell me about this relationship between you and log trucks.”

Her mother had laughed and, in that moment, log trucks had become a joke. Evan had a knack for filing off the edges. It was an unexpected benefit of marriage: when confronted by some small blight growing in the family crevices, her husband could smile and lop it off, send it flying through the air, inconsequential.

The storm door closed behind them, the kitchen warm from the sun beating through the glass. Several empty serving dishes were lined up along the counter waiting to be filled, and the table was set.

“I like your hair pulled back like that,” her mother said. “It’s burning up in here, isn’t it? I don’t think the air’s blowing right. I’ll open a window.”

Lucia hung her purse over a kitchen chair. “It feels fine. You’re just hot from running around.”

“Oliver!” her mother called. “They’re here!”

“We’ll go say hello,” said Lucia.

“Well, it’s not as if he’s going to come in here, is it?” said Caroline. She drifted toward the stove, lifting the lid from a pot of field peas, which Evan loved. Her curls—silver streaking the brown—did not shift as she stirred.

Lucia nudged Evan, steering him down the dim hallway with a hand between his shoulder blades. As usual, he bumped into the phone shelf that jutted from the knotted-pine wall.

Oliver Roberts was in his recliner. His white hair, still thick, swooped over his ears. Behind him, the mantel was decorated with two etched-glass hurricane lamps and a poodle made of sweetgum balls. The television thrummed with a stagecoach chase scene.

“Here they are!” he boomed. “My two favorite lunch guests!”

Lucia crossed over the rope rug, red as a blood clot. Her father flipped down the footrest, making as if he would stand, but as usual, she reached him before he made any progress. She hugged him, his cheek scraping hers pleasantly, and he shook Evan’s hand.

“Still feeling good about Coach Dye and that wishbone offense?” Oliver asked.

“I am,” Evan said. His voice was always heartier when he talked to her father.

“He called us the University of Auburn,” huffed Oliver. “Doesn’t even know the name of his own college.”

“That only happened once,” Evan said. “You called me Edward at least five times on my first visit. Cut him some slack.”

Oliver laughed. “I thought I called you Edgar.”

“That, too.”

“Hey, I got a new joke,” Oliver said, arms stretching to the ceiling.

“Let’s hear it,” Evan said.

“It’s a little racist, but—”

“No, Dad,” Lucia said.

Next to her, Evan studied the carpet.

“It’s not a bad one,” her father said. “There’s this black bus driver who makes the same stop every day—”

“Dad,” Lucia said, and part of her wondered if she should just let him tell the joke. Because it hurt him. It actually hurt his feelings that she would not listen to him. “Come on.”

“Lucia, it’s a joke. You know that. It doesn’t mean anything. Lord, the look on your face. You’re so serious.”

Evan looked away from the floor. “I’m telling you, if Dye can work miracles in one season at Wyoming, he can do it for us.”

“Did we watch the same game?” Oliver said, diverted. “Auburn against Wake Forest? The smallest school playing in a Power Five conference?”

“He’s changing the whole system,” Evan said.

“I think,” Lucia said, “that I’ll go see if Mother needs any help.”

Evan dropped onto the sofa, legs sprawling, and he gave her a look that said: Once again you’re abandoning me while I stay here and talk football because we are manly men and the kitchen is not our domain, and how the hell did you ever come out of this house?

Thank God he was an Auburn fan. A philosophy major, Ohio born, but the football redeemed him with her father. It opened the door to endless talk of post patterns and lob passes. Sitting across from her father, Evan never struggled with what to say next.

She was jealous sometimes.

She stepped back into the humid air of the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, pulling out the pitcher of tea and nudging aside the Hershey’s Syrup, which she could taste on her tongue just by looking at the can. Caroline was bending into the oven, pants slightly too tight, a bulge above her waistline. She would hate this view of herself.

“Do you want me to slice some tomato?” Lucia asked.

“That’d be nice,” Caroline said. “Celery, too. Make sure to string it good.”

“I know,” said Lucia.

“The Jell-O salad is on the middle shelf,” said Caroline. “And I need the Cool Whip.”

Lucia pulled out the Jell-O—lemon, her favorite—and the Cool Whip.

“Do you know,” said her mother, reaching for her silver mixing bowl, “that I’ve started adding almond extract? Can you imagine?”

“To the Jell-O topping?”

“Mm-hmm,” said Caroline. She had the cream cheese softening on the counter, its silver skin split open. “A teaspoon.”

Lucia cracked the oven, peering at the casserole and the dish under it—surely dumplings—both golden and simmering. The bubbles churned against the Pyrex.

“Do you remember Mavis Thorington at church?” her mother asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Lucia, thinking, She’s dead. Whoever she is, she’s dead.

“Her husband was Winston?” her mother prompted.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Massive heart attack. In her garage. Lucky she wasn’t driving.”

Lucia slipped on an oven mitt and turned the chicken casserole. “Do you leave out the vanilla when you put in the almond? Or add both?”

“I cut out the vanilla altogether,” Caroline said, smashing cream cheese with a fork. “‘Just a splash’ of almond, as Mama would say. You know she never measured anything.”

“‘A splash and a dab and a shake,’” Lucia agreed. Her mother enjoyed sifting through the old familiar phrases, bringing her own mother back into the kitchen with them.

“‘Stipple on some aloe,’” Caroline said.

That was a verb Lucia loved. She’d never