Free The Secret to Hummingbird Cake by Celeste Fletcher McHale

Ella Rae had spent most of the day playing volleyball. Poor thing was as competitive as I was. We sometimes stayed up all night long playing Yahtzee because neither of us would quit if we were behind. The domino games were worse than that.
    Laine was under one of the big white tents entertaining everybody’s kids with face painting and games. Children thought she was the original Mother Goose. I wished she would have a baby of her own, and I encouraged the idea at every opportunity. “I’m not married!” she said. “I don’t even have a boyfriend!”
    I pointed out, several times, that neither a husband nor a boyfriend was a requirement to get a baby. If she was uncomfortable with a one-night stand, then she could go the turkey baster route.
    I thought she was going to pass out discussing it. She’d made me promise to go to church the next Sunday just for suggesting she have a “baster baby out of wedlock.” Needless to say, she was neither amused nor interested. But she begged Ella Rae and me to have a baby so she could take care of it. Ella Rae wasn’t about to give birth to anything that kept her off a softball field or a tennis court, and the last thing I needed to add to the messed-up mix at my house was a baby. Besides, I didn’t hold anybody’s kid until their heads had stopped flopping around. Strange little creatures.

    The Crawfish Boil was, once again, a huge success. It had really been a good day. I had been so excited to see several friends who no longer lived here but always came down to attend the Boil, especially Charlotte. We talked on the phone once or twice a month, but there was no substitute for actually seeing a friend. Even her Mississippi husband had begun to grow on me a little. They left promising to meet us at LSU in the fall for a football tailgate.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation with Charlotte. I desperately wanted to believe that Jack hadn’t cheated on me, but how could I let myself? She was right about one thing, though—I knew my husband better than anyone. And I knew something was wrong and had been for a long time.
    It had to be about another woman. How could it be anything else? But if it were, why wouldn’t he just ask me for a divorce and be done with it? I’d signed a prenuptial agreement, something he hadn’t wanted but I had insisted upon. He wasn’t going to lose a dime, not that he cared much about money.
    I was grasping at straws. It always happened when I thought about it too much. Come on, Scarlett, help a sister out. Get this out of my mind for a while. Let me think about it tomorrow. But my Southern sister was nowhere in sight and the battle in my mind raged on. I tried to be logical about it, to eliminate my emotions and make a decision based on my head and not my heart. That lasted about ten seconds.
    Then I looked at it from Jack’s side of the fence. He could walk away from me right now and pretend like the last eleven years had never happened. I’d give him a divorce. Without a fight. So why wouldn’t he go ahead and ask? I would pack my bags with my head high, and even if my heart were in pieces, no one else would ever know it. If he was fooling around, I didn’t want to stay with him.
    I wasn’t going to be anybody’s second choice. I sure wasn’t going to end up just like Nancy Wheeler, whose husband’s affairs were so common that the man was virtually scandal proof. I swear, if he drove up through the middle of town with two hookers and a circus clown, nobody would even blink an eye. We’d probably all think, Oh, poor Nancy , then go back to our regularly scheduled program. I didn’t want to be the next Nancy Wheeler. I’d rather have my information right between the eyes, thank you very much.
    Whatever was going on with Jack, one thing was true. He’d been a saint today. In fact, he’d been the Jack I married. Very