Read Online Dear Carolina by Kristy W Harvey - Free Book Online Page B

Marlene with her push-up bras and cheap extensions.
    But then he added, “I bet she’s the kind of girl men get restraining orders against.”
    I laughed, putting my pink polka-dot napkin up to keep the cake in my teeth from showin’.
    â€œI know we don’t know each other real well,” Buddy said, “but I’m happy to help you out any way I can before the baby gets here or after.”
    I could feel that heat rising on up through me again. Buddy’s cheeks got a little pink, and I sure was hoping he was feeling that same thing.
    He cleared his throat and said, “You know, you being Graham’s cousin and me owing him so much.”
    Maybe it’s ’cause I was still right young and all, and I didn’t have the confidence I do now. But I couldn’t decide right then if Buddy might be being sweet to me over more than just him feeling loyal to Graham.
    â€œBuddy, you been nothing but nice to me through all this, and I think it’s a fine person who would treat a girl so good for no reason. You’re the kind of man my daddy woulda loved.”
    Thinking about my daddy like that made my head all woozy and my feet get to feeling numb and tingly. Ever since I been a youngen, when I get too scared or sad or worked up all my blood drains right outta my head and I like to keel over right there on the coffee table.
    â€œI didn’t know your daddy, but I knew Graham’s real good.And if those two brothers were anything alike, your daddy was a damn fine man.”
    They were more alike than collards and kale. Stubborn and hardheaded and prouder than one of them old Confederate soldiers. When Graham’s daddy started farming he begged my daddy to go into business with him. But Daddy wanted to make something of his own self. When the bank took back Daddy’s garage and he was back to being just a mechanic again while Graham’s daddy’s farm got all busy and moneymaking, that’s when it got bad between them brothers.
    Graham’s daddy begged my daddy to partner up with him on the farm. And my daddy quit talking to Graham’s daddy. I remember him stomping around outside the trailer, stem of wheat just a-going in his mouth. “Son of a bitch thinks he’s better than me now ’cause he’s made all this money and I ain’t. I’ll show him.”
    When my uncle died of a heart attack right there in his own field it damn near killed my daddy. I don’t have no business knowing why or how people get cancer. But I’d bet my last unemployment check that Daddy was so eat up with never making up with his big brother that it gave him the tumors. Holding in all that pain, keeping it bottled up like fizz in Pepsi, it’ll eat you alive just like the cancer did.
    That ain’t the kinda thing you say at a baby shower to some cute cowboy that’s got you dreaming of being thin again. But when Buddy looked at me sideways like, I knew I didn’t have to say nothing for him to understand.
    About that time, Marlene come back, smacking that gum, saying, “Sorry, I got caught up by the sweet potato ham biscuits.”
    Buddy, he patted my shoulder and said, “Just remember what I said,” and walked away to get food his own self.
    He like to have gotten down on one knee and asked me to marry him for how that hand felt. While a rainbow of Skittleswith ponies jumping through it danced in my head, Marlene said, “So, Jo, I was thinking with you being pregnant and all that we should start a baby store.”
    I was still so lit up from talking to Buddy that I was right more patient than usual with Marlene. So I said, real sweet like, “Marlene, why don’t we talk about this later.”
    It was her worst damn idea yet. We couldn’t make hide nor hair of a bunch of numbers and, last time I checked, businesses had to have something we didn’t have one damn bit of: money.
    â€œI’m dating this new