Read Online Cancel the Wedding by Carolyn T. Dingman - Free Book Online Page A

me.
    â€œWhat d’you mean?”
    â€œYou did that moany thing. My mom does it when she’s thinking about something.”
    â€œI think I’m just frustrated about today. I’m beginning to realize just how much we don’t know. If that makes sense.”
    â€œWhat do you mean! We found out there’s a super creepy underwater town, and that Grandma got all of her weird stuff from growing up here. I mean the ‘bless her heart’ thing and the monograms all over the place? These people put their letters on anything that sits still. They are totally wiggy about names.” She yawned. “I bet that’s why she named my mom Georgia, ’cause it’s where she was from.”
    â€œI wonder why she named me Olivia?”
    Logan shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.”
    â€œMaybe. Good-night, Lugnut.”
    â€œ ’Night, Livie.”
    All night I had dreams of my mother. She was swimming in the dark lake late at night. I was trying to follow her but she kept turning a corner into one of those jagged coves, going just out of sight. I could see the splashes of water being kicked up by her feet and sparkling in the reflection of the moonlight. Then the dream changed and I was in a boat chasing her and I was finally catching up.

FIVE
    I woke up to the realization that it was Tuesday, a workday, and I was not on my way to work. That’s a pretty great Tuesday. I tossed a pillow onto the sleeping lump in the next bed. It moaned. “Hey, Logan. There’s no work today!”
    â€œIbmsleepingoway.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Logan sat up in a huff. “I said I’m sleeping. Go. Away.” She put the pillow over her face and went back to sleep.
    Not that a teenage girl isn’t a little slice of joy in the mornings, but I decided to start my day without her. I got ready quickly and then headed down to Viscount James Something the fourth’s coffee shop to redeem myself after the whole waiter fiasco of the day before. I went straight to the counter to place my order and then waited there like a local until the food was ready. I cleared all of my work e-mails and returned a few calls while I was standing there.
    Jimmy passed my order across the counter and winked as he said “good girl” for figuring out how it was supposed to work.
    I decided that we needed to hit the cemetery at some point and at least see if they had any conditions regarding the deposit of my mother. I called Huntley Memorial Gardens while I ate my breakfast. The sweet woman who answered the phone had such a thick country accent that we had a hard time communicating. She didn’t really understand what I was asking for and I didn’t really understand her answers. This was a conversation that would need to take place face-to-face, so I thanked her for her help and hung up.
    I went back up to the counter to get some food to take to Logan. While I waited I asked Jimmy about the library and the local paper. The library wouldn’t open until eleven o’clock, so he told me where the newspaper office was as he handed me the to-go bag. There weren’t quite as many people out and about in the square this morning. Hazy rays of sunshine were breaking through the trees overhead and there were distant sounds of sprinklers bursting to life.
    I followed the directions Jimmy had given me across the dewy grass to the other side of the square. The newspaper’s office was located in an old house that must have been rezoned at some point as a commercial building. I was hoping the archives were digital because there was no way they could store much in the way of paper copies in that small building.
    The old, white house had a tiny front patch of a lawn with a wrought-iron post announcing that this was the Tillman Free Press . The post was dripping in gnarled vines of star jasmine to the point where you could barely read the words on the sign.
    To my great surprise