Here I Stay Read Online Free PDF Page A

front steps to get her wits together. The bank was a branch of a state-wide institution, but it occupied a building dating to the thirties, when banks looked like banks, not like red brick bungalows. Tall stone pillars supporting a pedimented Greek gable shone in the sunlight. Straight ahead was the main street of Ladiesburg, less than a mile from Foster's Amoco at one end to the Ladiesburg Meat and Freezer Company at the other. The business district was three blocks long, and the majority of the buildings were of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In recent years there had been a concerted attempt to restore the original appearance of the gracious Federal houses, and Ladiesburg merchants nurtured Machiavellian schemes for challenging New Market as the antiques capital of Maryland.
    Andrea had met a number of these merchants in the course of her enterprise; they had been helpful and friendly but she had not had time to respond to their overtures. Now, as she pondered her newfound wealth, her eyes focused on a building in the middle of the next block. It was the largest structure in town, including the bank—a low stone building with black shutters and tubs of petunias lining the facade. Andrea started walking.
    It was ten-thirty, and luncheon preparations at Peace and Plenty were underway. Andrea went through the back door and into the main dining room. Peace and Plenty had started life as an inn, "the oldest continually operated tavern in Maryland," as its brochure proclaimed. Reba Miller had taken over the restaurant from her parents. Presumably there had once been a Mr. Miller, since Reba had the title of "Mrs.," but Andrea suspected that even when that ephemeral personage had been alive he had been referred to as "Mr. Reba Miller."
    Reba stood in the corner of the room shouting orders at the waitresses who were setting the tables for lunch. A cigarette dangled from her mouth without impeding speech; the top of her black beehive wig brushed the ferns that filled hanging baskets attached to the low ceiling. She was almost six feet tall and correspondingly broad. She used the same type of makeup she had used when she was twenty; the slash of crimson lipstick was crooked, and the powder was caked in the wrinkles of her broad face. Andrea arrived in time to hear her bellow, "Get your ass in gear, Susie, we open in an hour."
    Susie, a slim little creature who looked delicious in the mobcap and colonial gown that constituted Peace and Plenty's uniform, grinned and went calmly on with what she was doing. Hearing Andrea approach, Reba turned and waved a hand in greeting.
    "Lazy little bitches," she said around her cigarette. "Want a cup of coffee?"
    She was obviously expecting a refusal. Usually when they met on the street or in one of the shops, Andrea excused herself on the grounds that she was too busy to take time off.
    When Andrea said, "Thanks; if it's not too much trouble," Reba smiled broadly. The cigarette fell out of her mouth. Andrea bent to pick it up, but before she could do so Reba stepped on it and ground it into the stone-flagged floor.
    "Tracy, get over here and clean up this mess," she shouted.
    They had their coffee in Reba's office, which adjoined the dining room so she could harass her staff. It was a large, untidy room, containing not only a desk and file cabinets, but a dining table and chairs, sofas, and bookcases. During a lull in the conversation, when Reba had rushed to the door to chastise a waitress for forgetting the napkins, Andrea glanced at the books; somehow she was not surprised to see that the selection was, to say the least, eclectic. It ranged from a worn, well-read copy of Mother Carey's Chickens to Proust in the original French, and included one or two volumes of the sort that Reba's generation usually hid under the mattress.
    Andrea wasted no time. "Are you the one I have to thank for all the sweetness and light and cooperation I've been getting?"
    Reba tried without success to