The Three Miss Margarets Read Online Free PDF Page B

her head, and Maggie said softly, “I think we both need to walk,” and Peggy knew there was no talking either of them out of it. So she and Maggie watched as Li’l Bit trudged back up the ridge with the light from her flashlight flickering in front of her. Then Maggie reached up to pat Peggy’s cheek and say, with a whisper of a smile, “It’ll be all right, Peggy dear, you’ll see.” And then she was gone too, picking her way through the remains of the pecan grove that had once surrounded her house, the beam from her flashlight lighting the way ahead of her. Peggy waited again until the light vanished; then she made herself leave the porch and walk to the car. But she couldn’t go just yet. She leaned against the car and stared up at the Justine Oaks without seeing them.
             
    J OSH DROVE IN SILENCE , and except for telling him when to turn, Laurel kept her mouth shut. Seeing the old cabin had driven away the last wisps of her lovely high. Standing on its porch tonight were three of the four remaining heavy hitters on her ma’s hate list. Add old Lottie, and you’d have all the ones who were still alive, right there at the cabin where it all began.
    According to some stories, Lottie’s family had lived in it since they were slaves on the Justine plantation. But Laurel never put much stock in that. More likely they’d moved in when Lottie’s mama and daddy started working for Dr. Maggie’s family. Now the cabin belonged to Lottie. Dr. Maggie had given it to her shortly after her own parents died. And Miss Li’l Bit had put in the dirt road that ran from the cabin to the highway. Laurel was on top of this history, because when she was a kid, her ma would get tanked and go on and on about it, for reasons Laurel didn’t understand.
    Lottie had raised her daughter, Nella, in that cabin. Then Nella and her husband came back to live with Lottie and raise their daughter—until all hell broke loose and Nella’s husband died and Nella left town with the child. Then Lottie lived in the cabin on the side of the ridge alone. And now Lottie was in an advanced-care facility that was much too PC to call itself a nursing home, and the cabin was empty. At least it had been until tonight.

Chapter Three
    W
ALKING HOME FROM THE CABIN might not have been such a good idea, Maggie realized, as she began to shiver. She hadn’t dressed warmly enough, or maybe it was shock setting in. She should have let Peggy drive her. But just as she was starting to get nervous, her house was in front of her, looming up out of the darkness with the magnolia trees on either side and crowding too close. It was a disgrace the way she’d let the pruning go.
    “You can make it,” she told herself. “You’ll be fine.” There was one more pecan tree ahead of her, the big one she always thought of as Lottie’s tree. Once she was past it, she’d be in the backyard. She walked under the tree, her feet crunching the rotten nuts that had fallen on the ground because she never thought of harvesting them anymore.
             
    I N THE OLD DAYS when the pecans were ready to fall, Lottie’s daddy, Ralph, who was the caretaker on the farm, would hire a couple of workmen for the day. They’d spread soft old white sheets on the ground under the trees and shake the branches with poles while the nuts fell to the ground. It was Lottie’s job to climb up to the limbs the men couldn’t reach and bounce on them until the rest of the nuts came down.
    One autumn when Lottie was up in the big tree working, Maggie waited until no one was watching and climbed up to help her. At first she was scared being up so high, but Lottie showed her how to brace herself against the tree trunk and she was fine.
    “Look, Maggie,” Lottie said, and pointed down at the world below them. There were the sweet-potato fields, her mama’s kitchen garden, and the rest of the pecan grove, all spread out at her feet. This was glory indeed. Up until that moment