Free Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson Page B

dead.” Amber gave a little gasp, her shoulders jerking up. I turned sideways in the booth, away from her. “Please, please, tell me I am wrong.”
    “Two to the head,” said Bernese, and her voice was creamy with satisfaction. “I would have got those boy dogs next, but they took off running and got under the junk cars when I started shooting.”
    “Oh, shit, Bernese. Shit! Are you crazy?”
    “Watch your mouth,” Bernese snapped. “I know what I’m doing.”
    But she didn’t. She didn’t have a clue. She’d gone up against Ona before, but she’d used lawyers and paperwork and police, all parts of the civilized world that the Fretts inhabited, a world that cowed the Crabtrees. Now she had opened with violence, and that was a language the Crabtrees spoke fluently. I suddenly felt so scared I couldn’t get a breath in. I wished I could simply fold myself up and slide down under the table and hide. “It’s a war, Bernese. It’s going to be an all-out war.”
    Bernese snorted rudely into the phone. “Well, I didn’t start it.
    My devil dog didn’t eat a Crabtree.”
    I had to get home. Not only to see Mama but to intercept Ona before she retaliated. My brain ticked back over to my to-do list and paused. I had several jobs scheduled that my agency would need to get someone to cover. I should probably give up the anthro classes altogether, since the semester was ending in a few weeks and I had no idea when I’d be back. Friday afternoon I was supposed to be at the courthouse, getting my divorce, but I couldn’t leave Genny and little Fisher and my injured mother to the nonexistent mercies of angry Crabtrees. I’d have to gauge Ona’s emotional state before I’d know if I could come back for the hearing.
    Maybe I could call Jonno and ask him to go on Friday and get us a new court date. I’d have to beg. As it was, I’d needed to take his hand and lead him through our breakup, showing him where to sign and ferrying him to and from our lawyer’s office. Honestly, he was so disconnected from the process that had he owned anything but a 1987 Chevy Impala, I could have robbed him blind. Even more honestly, there were moments when I had been so angry I probably would have.
    I was tired of patting him along through the jocular dissolution of our marriage. Jonno had treated our initial visit to the lawyer’s office like a field trip, a mildly interesting peek at how divorce worked, like going behind the blue door at the donut fac-tory. I was willing to admit that he might take it more seriously if I stopped sleeping with him, but when I was around him, my desire to murder him usually got sublimated. My hands were magnetically drawn toward him; they longed to wrap themselves inexorably around his lovely throat. They would cramp and twitch as I fought to hold them into flat, unthreatening pancakes at my sides, and then in the next breath, they’d be climbing him, never quite making it up to strangle him before I found myself on my back.
    “Nonny?” said Bernese. “You got quiet. You’re not bothered about the Crabtrees, are you? Because they can go to hell. This is about our family, about Genny and your mama.”
    I glanced over my shoulder. Amber was leaning forward strain-ing to hear, her pretty face avid and her eyebrows lowered. When our eyes met, she looked away fast, turning her whole head so that all I could see was her profile.
    “I’m not thinking straight,” I said. “I need to get going. I’ll bail you out if Uncle Lou hasn’t collected you by the time I get there.”
    She said goodbye and I hung up.
    My busy brain added “Find Jonno” to the running list in my head. I had to try, even though the chances of his actually showing on Friday were slim. After our shared lawyer had filed my petition, Jonno had never returned to sign the acknowledgment. I’d set up three appointments for him, and then he’d missed two and I’d missed one. I’d had our lawyer mail him a copy that he never