Read Online What a Man's Gotta Do by Karen Templeton - Free Book Online Page B

tenant.”
    â€œUh-uh. He went out a couple hours ago.”
    Like a bat out of hell, actually.
    Bev stopped, her arms full of assorted sweaters, books and a two-foot tall inflatable dinosaur. “In this weather?”
    â€œHe’s a big boy, Ma. He’ll manage.”
    Her mother gave her a look, then swooped behind the sofa. Then Mala heard, “He’s real good, let me tell you,” followed by her mother’s reddened face as she struggled back up.
    â€œGood?”
    Bev gave her a “keep up” look. “Yeah, good. As in, cooking. Your father and I were up to Galen’s Saturday night, figuring we should give it a try, although your father wasn’t all that sure he wanted to, since you know how crazy he is about Galen’s ravioli. Where do you want these?” she said, holding up a bunch of socks. Mala grabbed them out of her mother’s hand. A good half dozen, none of them matching. “Anyway,” her mother went on, “I had the lasagna, but I made your father have the grilled tuna, since the doctor told him he needed more fish in his diet, and they were both out of this world. Between you and me, maybe even a little better than Galen’s.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œOkay, maybe not better, but just as good. He uses slightly different seasonings or something. But when we told the waitress—it was Hannah Braden that night, you know, Rod and Nancy Braden’s girl? I mean, isn’t that something, with all that money they have, she doesn’t think she’s too good to wait tables to earn her own pocket money.”
    â€œMa-aa? Geez.”
    Bev swatted at her. “So, anyway, when we told her we wanted to thank him personally, she said she was sorry, but he wouldn’t come out front for anybody. Can you imagine that?”
    Mala bent over the coffee table to clear away the same assorted cups and plates she’d already cleared twice today. “Eddie prefers to keep to himself. That’s all.”
    â€œStill?”
    The thin, annoying whine of the teakettle pierced through the whoosh of the heat pumping through the floor vent. Mala straightened, swiping back a hank of her hair with her wrist. “What do you mean, still? ”
    â€œNana Bev!”
    â€œI know, honey,” Bev called over her shoulder. “And don’t you dare touch it—I’ll be there in a sec.” Then to Mala, “From when he was here before, when you were still in high school. Mind you, I only saw him the one time, but the way he hung back, that stay-away-from-me look on his face…” She shook her head.
    â€œI had no idea you even knew who he was.”
    â€œWhich just goes to show there’s a lot about your old mother you don’t know,” Bev said. Mala rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he was staying with Molly and Jervis Turner, y’know—”
    Yes, that much she knew.
    â€œâ€”and Jervis occasionally did some work for your father, when he got more calls than he could handle. He couldn’t handle the complicated stuff, but he was fine when it came to switching out plugs or installing new ceiling fans, things like that. Anyway, this was when I was still going into your father’s office a couple days a week to do the books. Jervis came by for his paycheck, and he had Eddie with him. Jervis wasn’t much of a talker, either, but he said the boy was staying with them until he finished out school, that his mother had died when the kid was six, and that the kid’d lived with various and assorted relatives down south since then. And that Molly and him might’ve taken the kid on sooner if anybody’d bothered to ask. Since you never said anything about him, I figured he wasn’t part of your group.”
    Mala forced her knotted hand to relax, then shook her head. “By his own choice,” she said, remembering how Eddie had rebuffed everyone’s overtures. Not rudely, exactly. But