Read Online A Toast Before Dying by Grace F. Edwards - Free Book Online

lifted his fork.
    “How long will you be gone?”
    “Two weeks or so.”
    It was the “or so” that got to me. I lifted my glass and did not offer a toast. In the middle of the night, when he had spoken of the training assignment in Los Angeles, I had rested my head on his chest, and for some unfathomable reason had begun to cry.
    Maybe I hadn’t wanted to hear bad news in the middle of something so good. Maybe there was such a thing as loving a person so much you ached to reach across even small distances to touch him.
    And when I had finally slept, the dreams came: of the plane going down; of a South Central shoot-out and he hadn’t worn his vest.
    I had awakened shivering in sweat and had spent the next hour wrapped in his robe and kneeling on the terrace.
    Somewhere out of the darkness I had felt a familiar presence, then heard something too slight and too soft to be a whisper. I knew who it was so I didn’t turn around.
    Don’t worry about things before they happen, girl. Didn’t I teach you anything? And get up off your knees if you’re not praying …
    No need to answer. I had remained quiet and gazed into the dark water until my mother’s voice drifted off on the night breeze. My head cleared and I was able to creep back to bed.
    Tad saw my expression now and reached across the table for my hand. “Come with me, Baby. Come on …”
    I thought about it for a minute, pleased with the possibilities. I had entertained myself with vivid dreams of going away alone with him. Even if it was just across the street. I wanted to go. West Coast. West Nepal, west hell. Last summer in St. Croix, as nice as it had been after all the hell I’d been put through, didn’t really count because the whole family had been there. Now here was the chance for just the two of us, and I had to shake my head.
    As tolerant as Dad was of my lifestyle, he had grown old worrying about me. Now, as old as I was, I had to draw the line. This may have been the nineties but my wild ways had been a thorn in his side since I was sixteen. Now here I was, plucking out my own gray strands, and he still worried, still waited up. Mainly because Mom was gone and my sister, Benin, was also gone.
    An occasional night out was one thing. Two weeks on the other side of the continent was quite another. If I went, I’d have to come back with a paper signed by a justice of the peace.
    “Dad and Alvin would have a problem with that,” I said, trying to explain in the shortest possible way. Even as I said it, I hurt. I felt worse when he whispered, “Ah. Well …” As if he understood something I didn’t.
    We finished breakfast in silence and I thought about crawling back into bed to divide the sections of the Sunday
Times
, but there was no time for reading. In the evening, he’d be gone.
    We finished the champagne and I sat on the edge of the bed, fingering the tangled sheets and trying not to feel weepy, trying not to feel anything, and failing when he came close and I felt his mouth again, moving soft against my shoulder.

chapter seven
    T he main corridor in the Criminal Court Building was like Times Square at five o’clock and just as confusing if you didn’t know where you were going. The pace was normal only at the check-in line, where bags were emptied of keys, guns, knives, tokens—anything metal. On the other side of the metal detector, chaos closed in, sweeping you into a parade of cops, clerks, attorneys, murderers, arsonists, and larcenists—grand and petty—and other visitors.
    I walked fast, pulling Bertha by the hand. She pulled back to stare as several doors off the corridor swung open and closed on brief snapshots of other crises. Along the way we passed a young girl leaning against the wall with a crying baby. She was crying also, her round teenage face aged by incomprehensible circumstance. I imagined her man had probably been sentenced or denied bail or skipped bail and a warrant had been issued.
    A few feet away, a