Bootlegger’s Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

down. There was barely enough fading daylight to see by as people began to wander out to their cars. I did the courtesies with the organizers and party officials and moved toward the doorway myself, where my brother Seth stood talking with some neighbors. He put out his arm and gave my shoulder a squeeze as he drew me to his side. “You did good, honey,” he said.
    Suddenly feeling tired, I leaned against his comfortable bulk. Seth’s five brothers up from me, but we’ve always been close.
    “Hey, congratulations, Jed,” he said.
    I hadn’t realized that Jed was right behind me.
    “Know you’re real proud of her,” said Seth’s wife, Minnie, beaming at him.
    “Oh, I am, I am,” Jed agreed.
    I finally remembered what they were talking about. “Hard to believe Gayle’s old enough to be winning college scholarships,” I said.
    “Tempus sure keeps on fugiting,” someone observed. “Seems like it was just Christmas and now I’ve already cut my grass three times.”
    “We’ve got bluebirds nesting in three boxes,” Minnie offered, but the men were off on crops, allotments, and the prospects of rain before the weekend, so she and I spent a few minutes talking strategy. Minnie’s always been active in the Colleton County Democratic Women and was my closest thing to a campaign manager.
    Sherry and her boyfriend passed by in the deepening twilight. “We’ll be at the car when you’re ready to go,” she told me.
    I promised to visit Seth and Minnie real soon and started to follow Sherry across the crowded parking lot when Jed fell into step with me.
    “Let me drive you back to Dobbs,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
    I frowned.
    “About Gayle,” he said. “She’s got a crazy bee in her bonnet and you’re just the person to smash it for me.”
    For Gayle was a different story. I told Sherry that I had a ride home and to go on without me. Seeing Jed waiting over by his car, she winked at me. Probably thinking Jed and I ought to get back together.
    Not that we ever really were together.
    I couldn’t say what it was that kept it from happening. God knows I’d had a heavy enough crush on him when I was a kid and he’d been one of that gang of teenage boys that dropped by the farm every weekend to tussle with my brothers over whatever ball was in season.
    I was a teenager myself, though still much too young for him, when his first wife was killed; but the gap had narrowed by the time he and Dinah Jean were divorced a year or so ago. We’d had a mild flurry of dates-dinners, movies, a couple of dances at the American Legion Hut-but I’d let them dwindle out to nothing.
    “There is a tide…” said Shakespeare. If so, it must have crested years earlier because being with Jed never quite loosed the floodgates of adult passion. He certainly made all the right moves. There’d even been some heavy breathing after one of Reid’s parties, but that turned out to be the full moon and three of Reid’s Orange Blossom Specials. Sunlight and black coffee soon lowered my pulse rate. I told myself it’d been a case of forbidden fruit, and to test my hypothesis, I let a week pass, then met him for a movie; two weeks, then a concert to show there were no hard feelings. After that, I told Aunt Zell and Sherry to make excuses if he called. He only called once more.
    Nobody ever had to draw Jed a diagram.
    But I kept a soft spot for Gayle. I was the first sitter Janie had trusted outside her own family, and I’d continued to sit for Gayle after Dinah Jean and Jed were married. There hadn’t been much real contact in the last few years though until Jed and I began seeing each other. I think Gayle wanted me to be stepmother number two, but when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, she gradually stopped finding excuses to phone.
    Actually, I still felt a little guilty about that.
    “So what kind of bee’s bugging Gayle?” I asked, when we were in the car and buckling up.
    Jed clicked my seat belt into