Weekends in Carolina Read Online Free PDF Page A

he couldn’t see in her face. “The land might, though. After all these years, she’s finally producing and you won’t even come and admire her beauty.”
    “She — ” he rolled the female pronoun Max used around in his mouth, enjoying the feel “—shouldn’t take it personally, either.”
    Even though his father was dead, Trey still didn’t want to be near anything the old man had touched. Henry William Harris Jr.’s touch was poisonous and the toxins lingered on the farm like gases too heavy for the wind to blow away. The miasma would outlast the stinky grime of cigarette smoke on the walls and the farmhouse would never really be clean. Not to him.
    Max was talking again and Trey only caught the tail end of what she was saying, but he got the gist; Max would tell the land not to take it personally, either. “I have to clean up before the viewing,” she continued. “And you probably have to change clothes now.”
    She didn’t wait for a response, just left him in the fields and the rain, without even granting him the protection of Ashes to bark at his bad memories and keep them at bay.
    * * *
    T HIS WASN ’ T M AX ’ S first Southern funeral—she’d been to the funeral of her maternal grandfather over in High Point—so she knew the viewing meant Hank would be cleaned up from his heart attack and subsequent car accident and on display. As much as funerals played a role in the North Carolina gossip chain and anyone with a claim of kin or friendship on the deceased or the survivors’ side was expected to go, this couldn’t be Trey’s first funeral, either. But every time he looked over at the open casket, his eyes closed in a barely concealed grimace. No one should look so attractive while looking for an escape hatch.
    Each person who expressed their condolences to Trey and Kelly probably didn’t notice Trey’s discomfort. But they probably weren’t pretending to talk farming with neighbors while really watching the grieving family like Max was.
    “Maxine!” The voice of Lois Harris jolted Max out of her thoughts. “Did that mechanic Garner recommended work out for you?”
    Max had given up asking Miss Lois to stop calling her Maxine. It wasn’t worth the wasted breath, plus Lois and Garner had been invaluable in providing local farming contacts. So Miss Lois could call Max whatever she wanted and Max would call her by the not-quite-formal-but-still-respectful name of Miss Lois, and they would both be happy.
    “Yes, he’s been quite helpful.” The used tractor had seemed like such a deal when she’d bought it, but it turned out to be a piece of junk. Luckily, the Harris’s mechanic got it working at the end of last season and it appeared to be making it through the winter. Still, saving for a new tractor seemed smarter than trusting in the magic of the Harris’s mechanic, even if she now had three pots of savings money and keeping track of them strained her Excel spreadsheet. Asking to borrow a tractor last summer had been professionally embarrassing—and she had no desire to repeat the exercise.
    “Now, don’t let him...”
    Max stopped listening to Miss Lois warn her about the mechanic’s propensity to predict doom. Not only had she heard it before, but she was curious about the attractive brunette grabbing on to Trey’s hand with both hands and pressing it to her heart.
    “That’s my second cousin.” Miss Lois leaned in to whisper to Max. “Never been to a funeral or wedding she didn’t cry at, bless her heart.” Sure enough, the young woman had both moved on to Kelly and been moved to tears. “The Roxboro Mangums always have a pool going on when she’ll burst into tears. She’s no blood relation to Trey, but she’s not your real competition.”
    Miss Lois was a wily woman and it was a fool who turned a back to her. She “y’all’ed” and “blessed hearts” and “sugared” like a Southern cliché, but she wasn’t a fragile flower of womanhood. Max hadn’t been in