Read Online High Spirits [Spirits 03] by Alice Duncan - Free Book Online Page B

four years before. Now he socialized. And took Spike for walks.
           Golly, but I loved my family. Impulsively I gave Ma a hug. She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, but I only grinned at her. “You’ll triumph over those auditors, Ma. I have faith in you.”
           “Go along with you, Daisy Majesty,” she said, borrowing one of Aunt Vi’s favorite sayings. By gum if she wasn’t blushing when she exited through the side door to walk to work.
           “Daisy, you’re a caution,” Vi said, springing a new saying on me. I’d heard it before, but not from my aunt’s lips, and I wondered what a caution was, as related to persons. I didn’t ask. Vi didn’t take things quite as literally as Ma did, but I didn’t want to confuse her so early in the morning. She tapped her upper lip with her forefinger. “We need onions and potatoes.”
           “I’ll stop by the store on my way to work,” I offered.
           “Thank you, dear. That would be very nice of you.”
           “You sure you trust me?”
           Vi chuckled. “I trust you to pick them out, just not to cook them.”
           I chuckled, too, although I rued my lack of cooking skills. “Thanks for the great breakfast, Vi. Any special occasion?”
           “No. I just felt like making waffles.”
           Boy, I wished I felt like cooking every once in a while. Or maybe it was better that I didn’t since I could burn water.
           Vi set a plate before me, and I slathered butter on the piping-hot waffle. My father’s sister, my aunt Madeline, sent us a big can of Vermont maple syrup every Christmas, and I was about to pour some of the delicious stuff, heated in a saucepan on our lovely self-regulating gas range, on my buttered waffle when Vi interrupted me.
           “Is Billy awake, Daisy?”
           “I don’t think so. Want me to look?”
           “Why don’t you? I don’t want to cook a waffle for him until he’s ready for it, but I have to go to work.”
           She didn’t have to add that she didn’t trust me to cook Billy’s waffle for him. Everyone in the family knew better than to trust me in the kitchen.
           “Be right back.” I hurried to our room, hoping my waffle wouldn’t get cold.
           My heart took a nosedive when I saw Billy slugging back the contents of the bottle I’d left in the dressing table drawer. He heard me at the door, but he didn’t hesitate to finish what he’d been doing. He swallowed, grimaced, and looked my way. “Stuff tastes vile,” he said.
           Lots of words bubbled up inside me and danced on my tongue, but I swallowed them all, reminding myself that Billy’s pain wasn’t his fault and, therefore, neither was his dependence on opiates. Instead, I forced a smile. “Aunt Vi has a cure for that. She fixed bacon and waffles for breakfast.”
           His eyebrows lifted and for a second, he looked like the man I’d married. I darned near burst into tears.
           “Be right there,” he promised, smiling at me.
           I shut the door, gulped a couple of times, and returned to the kitchen table. Aunt Vi must have read my expression because she patted me on the shoulder. “He was a good soldier, Daisy. Now you have to be one. It’s a crying shame.”
           It sure was.
           “Thanks, Vi.”
           She set another plate on the table. “Why don’t you butter that one for your husband while it’s still hot, dear?”
           So I did.
     

Chapter Five
 
    The telephone waited to ring until Billy and I had sopped up the last of our maple syrup with the last of our waffles, which was a consideration on its part that it didn’t generally grant us. Most days the darned phone rang just as I was drinking my coffee or chewing something. That morning I managed to grab the receiver before any of our other party line members picked up