Bittersweet Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

steps and the living room, bobbling clothes and toiletries. Sure enough, Daddy sat in the recliner and Mercutio lounged on his lap. “I thought indoor cats were for ‘stupid city people.’ ”
    Daddy’s lips quirked. “Well, if I leave him outside those damned McElroy dogs are going to chew him up. Some idiot took out his claws.”
    He was referring to the same idiot who’d dumped the cat in the dip of the road between the McElroy farm and ours. Almost all of my childhood pets had come from that very spot, a dark place where people slowed down their cars just long enough to abandon unwanted dogs and cats. Last year while home for Thanksgiving, I’d rescued Mercutio from that very spot. Daddy, not being a fan of Shakespeare, insisted on calling him Freddy Mercury or a more generic “buddy” instead.
    â€œSo you decided to go, huh?”
    â€œWell, you told her to come on over.”
    He frowned. “I thought you might call her back and tell her no.”
    As if I’m a mind reader. “Next time give me the option.”
    His eyes narrowed, but he continued to stroke the cat, reminding me of Bond’s nemesis Blofeld. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
    â€œDaddy, I’m a big girl. It’s karaoke night, and I’ve been there before.”
    â€œStill.”
    He didn’t mention Julian directly. He wasn’t going to say that name because he’d taken Julian’s betrayal almost as hard as I had. Maybe harder. He’d had to get over his initial prejudice against the McElroys only to be proven right. I had been proven wrong and gained the prejudice as a consequence.
    I huffed out a breath. “You don’t think he will be there, do you?”
    â€œDoubt it. Goat Cheese told me he swore off going that night he and the Gates boy raised a ruckus.”
    Interesting. Julian had once told me he was done with fights, but he’d been in at least one more.
    â€œIt never ceases to amaze me that you can call a grown man Goat Cheese and keep a straight face.”
    Mercutio turned around three times and nestled deeper into my father’s lap.
    â€œWell, I’m not the idiot who announced to the world I was going to make my millions raising goats and selling their cheese.” To my father’s mind, the world was full of idiots. Idiots who tried to raise goats for cheese. Idiots who declawed cats. Idiots who kept cats in the house. I supposed he’d just joined the ranks of the latter, but I wasn’t going to point it out again—that would make me one of those “idiots who can’t mind her own business.”
    I shrugged and headed in the direction of the bathroom, a sixties add-on to the back porch—thank goodness Granddaddy Satterfield hadn’t been so concerned about the integrity of the home place to insist we keep the outhouse.
    â€œHey, you.”
    I turned around, not entirely certain if he was talking to the cat or to me. Rather than answer, I gave him the same look I gave my students when they were disrespectful.
    â€œDammit, don’t look at me like that. When you do, you look like her,” he scowled.
    â€œWell, I do have a name.”
    He muttered something under his breath before continuing, “Well, Rosemary, I found something the other day I thought you might be interested in. It’s on the old sewing table by the window. Your mother wanted you to have it.”
    â€œThanks, Daddy,” I said softly. I walked past the kitchen table to the little sewing table that had been Granny Satterfield’s. There on the top was a manila folder with papers jutting out at all angles. On the front my mother’s neat script proclaimed, A History of the Satterfield-McElroy Feud.
    I shifted towels, clothes, and such to the right and let my left hand skim her handwriting reverently. I’d heard about this folder. Before she got sick, Mom would tell me old stories, things