The Angel Whispered Danger - By Mignon F. Ballard Page 0,3

hope it’s not a boy!” Josie said.

“You like Darby and Jon okay, and you’ve always loved playing with little Hartley.” Marge’s youngest at three was, according to her, “no bigger than a skeeter bump,” but had already managed to climb from the mulberry tree to their garage roof and was a maniac on a tricycle.

“Beats hanging around with that dumb Cynthia,” Josie said. “Darby said he bet if she ever had an idea it would bust her head wide open.”

“Burst,” I said. “And Darby oughta be ashamed talking about his own cousin like that.” I hated to admit I had felt the same way about Cynthia’s mother, my cousin Deedee, when I was her age.

And she still got under my skin. When we were home just last Christmas, I’d heard Deedee bellowing in the produce department of J & G Groceries, telling Mr. Jim Whitby, who owns the store, that his coconuts didn’t slosh. Mr. Whitby’s about eighty—deaf in one ear, and can’t hear in the other—and the poor thing never did understand what she was saying. I hid behind a pyramid of canned cranberry sauce until she left.

“You don’t have to be best friends with somebody in order not to be rude—and she is your cousin,” I reminded my daughter—as well as myself. And if you could hear eyes roll, Josie’s would’ve sounded like marbles in a can.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said a few minutes later as we turned onto Highway 16 on the outskirts of Wilkesboro, North Carolina.

I was glad to see a peach stand next to the gas station where we stopped, and took the opportunity to buy a large basket of peaches, some green beans and a few onions. Although I knew Mom would leave her kitchen well-stocked, I wouldn’t be able to count on perishables. And since we would be having dinner with Marge and her family that night, I got a basket for them, as well.

Two men in overalls joked with each other as they rearranged produce on long tables, and while Josie waited in the car I took my time admiring shiny jars of strawberry jam, peach pickles and plastic-wrapped loaves of homemade bread. The only other customers were a woman and a young girl. The older one wore a frothy dress in a splash of sunrise colors that looked oddly out of place in a rural produce stand, and she shook her bright head and held up a warning finger as her younger companion reached for a peach. How odd, I thought, since it was a peach stand. Still, it was a comforting place and I wish I could have lingered longer.

I hadn’t enjoyed local peaches since the summer before, and the rosy-ripe smell of them almost made me heady. I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it all the way to Bishop’s Bridge without biting into one—peach fuzz and all. Josie already had, and now she looked around for a place to put the pit, sticky juice running down her arm, and I thought of the young girl back at the stand who had probably meant to do the same. For the first time since we’d left the beach that morning, my daughter looked almost pleasant. “Good as last year’s?” I asked, handing her a wipe.

Josie licked her lips. “Mmm . . . maybe even better.” She sniffed. “You didn’t tell me you bought strawberries, too.”

“That’s because I didn’t. They’re out of season now. Don’t you remember when I bought some at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago, they told me that would be the last of them till next year?” Strawberries were my daughter’s favorite fruit, and the ones you bought in the grocery store just didn’t taste the same.

“Then why do I smell them?” Josie peered around the back of her seat as if she thought she might find some, like red treasure, hidden there.

“Must be your imagination,” I said.

So why did I smell them, too?

CHAPTER TWO

For supper, Marge served chicken pie made with a real crust, baked ham, candied sweet potatoes, green beans and hot biscuits with homemade blackberry jam. I had some of everything. “How do you stay so skinny eating like this?” I asked, pushing myself away from a chocolate cake shaped like a bus, and almost as big. We were celebrating Hartley’s third birthday, and he’s obsessed with anything with wheels.

“Chase after these three for a while, and you’ll see.” My cousin served her youngest the first piece,