Read Online A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online

southern party in years, and I began to notice a difference in it. The voices were certainly as boisterous, the throats as dry. Of course these voices had a different cadence, for the most part; some Houghton people from the North and Midwest added variety. But many of the topics of conversation I could hear were the same – the president, the economy, children, personalities.
    But there was a difference. Finally I had it. Most of the people I’d known in New York were on their way up or already there, in one of the most competitive cities in the world; a city in which making the grade locally meant making the grade all over the world.
    Incredibly, these people at this little party in Knolls, Tennessee, were more assured. They had a place; and by God, they knew it. With the exception of the imported college people, the crowd in Mimi’s living room was interrelated, interbred, and interdependent. And with rare exceptions they would always be accepted in the place they’d been born to, no matter what any one of them did.
    That had its advantages and disadvantages, like any other given condition. But this evening, in the flush of successful party-giving and the warmth of homecoming, that assurance seemed almost divine. In this society I felt an incredible safety that I’d felt nowhere else. I sank back into it as if it were a soft couch. Back in the fold. No need to prove myself. My struggle in New York seemed ludicrous.
    Barbara shouted something in my ear then, and I snapped to. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I did hear enough to tell her she was acquiring a southern accent. Barbara laughed so much that I realized she was certainly appreciating the liquor. She was flushed with the heat of packed bodies and a good dose of bourbon. Stan, her Chaucerian lover, looked mildly embarrassed by Barbara’s noisy good cheer, but it appeared he was matching her drink for drink. Maybe later in the evening I would get to see shy Stan Haskell let his hair down. What a prospect.
    Right now he was gesturing wildly to someone beyond my left shoulder. I twisted to see who it was. My rescuer from the cloister of the English and Administration building was making his way to our little group.
    ‘Nickie Callahan, Theo Cochran,’ Barbara introduced us. ‘Nickie, Theo is our registrar at Houghton.’
    I beamed at Theo. ‘We already met, in the dark,’ I told Barbara. Barbara laughed immoderately again.
    Theo smiled and nodded to me, then craned toward Barbara. He was looking rather handsome this evening, in his Roman senator/well-fed way. ‘Congratulations, Barbara! On the tenure!’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you since I heard.’
    ‘Thanks, I’m celebrating! Where’s your wife?’
    Theo pointed toward the farthest corner of the room. His wife seemed to be the intelligent-looking woman wearing a dress that would have made any designer throw up.
    ‘How’s Nell?’ Barbara asked. I must have looked blank. Stan bent over to tell me that Nell was Theo’s little girl. I nodded. There was that special inflection in Barbara’s voice that signaled a delicate subject, so I sobered my expression appropriately.
    ‘She’s doing as well as we expect,’ the registrar told Barbara through stiff lips.
    And that was the end of Theo’s stay in our company. He stood there the second longer required for courtesy, then nodded curtly and moved off to rejoin his wife.
    ‘You shouldn’t have asked,’ Stan told Barbara. I got the feeling that perhaps I should edge away. Stan was obviously more than a little aggravated with Barbara.
    She accepted his irritation as just. ‘You’re right, that was dumb. Nell’s his little girl, Theo’s only child,’ she explained to me. ‘She has leukemia.’
    ‘Oh, that’s horrible!’
    ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it at all. It was really stupid of me to ask. But I
do
want to know how she’s getting along and show some concern. It’s okay to talk to Sarah Chase about it – that’s