Barbecue and Bad News Read Online Free PDF

worst.
    Scott gave Chaz the nod, and Chaz dropped his flag to get the first float on its way down the parade route.

    Music filled the air, and the low boom and perfectly timed rim clicks of a bass drum made the children bounce with excitement. Savannah had to admit she too was beginning to feel anxious about the parade. Her mood was ten times more cheerful than it had been just a short while ago when she was cruising down the interstate.
    Savannah raised her iPhone and snapped a picture of one of the floats. Evelyn had never steered her wrong before, and her advice to take advantage of the parade to skip that dreaded wedding was feeling like a pretty good idea.
    She’d hesitated only a minute before taking Evelyn’s suggestion. One more click and the picture would go to Aunt Cathy; Savannah’s cousin, the bride, Winnie; and motormouth Monica, Savannah’s best friend all through high school, who was sure to spread the word as fast as the torque from that mechanic’s air tools had removed the lug nuts from her wheel.
    She typed, Car trouble and now stuck behind a parade in Adams Grove, VA. Sorry, I’m not going to make it. All my best on this special day. Love, Savannah. That would have to do.
    Sucking in a breath, she hit Send.
    The sound of the text zipping out into the world made her stomach spin in a very uncomfortable way that reminded her of the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. Old feelings from the last time she was in that small town she grew up in still haunted her way too many years after she’d fled the darned place. Belles Corner. It sounded so charming, but boy, could it put her stomach in a knot.
    She hiked back up Main Street, nearly catching up with the first float that had passed by when she was down at Adams Grove Garage. She wasn’t sure what it was powered by, but whatever it was, it was struggling. She could just picture a rusted VW bug underneath the cardboard-looking float covered in streamers and what looked like Easter grass. Too bad forty clowns couldn’t jump out of it and push the thing. It would surely move faster.
    Joining the locals along the sidewalk settled her uneasiness some. She’d just begun to relax when her phone indicated someone had texted her back. Her knee-jerk reaction was to grab for her phone, but she stopped short and decided to just pretend to be out of range. That felt rather like a victory in itself.
    She slipped out of her sweater and tied it around her waist, then leaned against the lamppost and watched another float go by. How many years had it been since she actually stopped and watched a parade? Except for the occasional glimpse of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade . . . never, since she left Belles Corner. Her hometown was so small the only parade they ever had wasn’t a parade at all, but rather just a convoy of pickup trucks on the opening day of hunting season. It had been a tradition for as long as she could remember. She wondered if they still did it.
    DC had its share of parades, but comparing the big-city parades to ones like this was like comparing movies to slide shows.
    She’d only been to one parade in DC, and that was only because she’d had to be in it. Right after she’d taken the job with Evelyn, all the writers at the paper rode on a float sponsored by GetItNowNews in the Christmas parade right past the Capitol building. She was still pretty sure they’d tricked her into drawing that short straw that forced her to be the newspaper’s stupid mascot. As if it wasn’t bad enough being the only woman, she had to be the one wearing a rolled-up-newspaper costume, which really made no sense at all, since they didn’t even have a physical paper anymore. Everything was online. Someone must have dragged that musty thing out of an old storage closet. The guys had spent the better part of the next year begging her to swat them for being naughty.
    The timing of that parade had been less than perfect while she’d been trying to make a good first