Free Finding Home by Jackie Weger Page B

keepin’ your face clean, like she taught you?” She kept her eyes on Dorie.
    “ You think my mother is watching me? All the time?”
    “ Well, mayhap not all the time. I imagine heaven is a pretty busy place what with saintly choirs, and angels flittin’ here and yonder. But no doubt the first thing your ma does when she gets up of a mornin’ in heaven is look down to see if your face is clean and your hair is brushed.” She watched Dorie pondering the idea.
    “ Can my mother hear me if I talk to her?”
    “ I ain’t sure about that. Let me think on it. Right now I got to get Willie-Boy outta the tub.”
    She also had a whole wealth of other things to think on. She’d been taking Gage Morgan’s animosity personal. His digs at her about being womanly—why that was on account of his own wife stepping out on him. That put a different slant on things.
    Most likely Gage w anted to get romantic, but cuckolded as he’d been, he didn’t trust a woman. His man-ego was bruised terrible. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon Phoebe figured and figured, looking for a solution around a disloyal wife who was dead and buried.
    Considering how little attention she paid it, the gumbo turned out tasty. She made corn bread, bread pudding and iced tea to wash it all down. Willie-Boy was too miserable to sup at the table. She fed him from a tray and left him lying on his stomach, arms and legs stretched out, like an unpapered kite.
    Dorie and Maydean were still at the dining table when Gage came in from the shed. He washed up and took his place. Silently Phoebe placed food before him. He was taking to her serving him as if it was the most ordinary of things. Routine. That was a good sign. He spoke once to Dorie about the crab catch. Phoebe caught Maydean faking manners and trying to get his attention with puckered lips.
    “ Dorie, if you and Maydean want to watch Wheel of Fortune on TV, you can take your pudding in the living room, that is, if your pa don’t have no objection.”
    Mouth full of buttered corn bread, Gage shook his head.
    “I’m fine where I am,” said Maydean, sugarcoating the words.
    Phoebe bent low and hissed in her ear. “You ain’t fine. And you’re gonna get worse soon’s I get you alone.”
    Scowling hard, she shoved a bowl of pudding at Maydean. Once the girls left the kitchen Phoebe made herself a glass of tea and sat down opposite Gage. The solution to Gage Morgan was crystal clear. She knew just how to ease his mind about herself, but it had to be done in a roundabout way.
    “ I don’t like anybody staring at me while I’m eating,” he said.
    A hot cloud grazed Phoebe ’s eyelids. “I ain’t starin’. I’m admirin’,” she said brazenly.
    Gage gave her an icy glare. “You can’t soften me up. I’m not the kind of man that’d take a pound of flesh for what’s owed me. Even if it was offered by a woman who could spare it.”
    Phoebe ’s gall rose. She swallowed it back. “I ain’t offerin’ you anything. And I don’t need your permission to admire a thing or not. Howsomever, you’ve been misinformed by somebody. Your looks ain’t nothin’ special to draw the eye. I was admirin’ the manners you have.”
    His cynicism was expressed in one dark spiky eyebrow, arched as if it’d been plucked to appear that way.
    “ Day after tomorrow is Sunday. We Hawleys are church-goin’. I was just wonderin’ if you know of a good Baptist church hereabouts. One that’s right strict and preaches damnation against fornication. I ain’t for loose fornicators.”
    His cynical expression faded, replaced by—Phoebe couldn ’t put a name to what replaced it. She felt her heart compress uneasily. He wasn’t taking to her solution right.
    “ Who the hell do you think you are? To come into my home and pass judgment.”
    Phoebe was thunderstruck. “Are you a fornicator?”
    “ Don’t try to cover up what you meant,” he sneered. “You gossiped at the crab house about Velma. My wife