Free Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) by G. A. McKevett Page A

so of rearranging furniture on worn linoleum and shuffling mismatched china around the Formica-topped table, Savannah found herself seated beside her grandmother, a rapidly filling plate in front of her.
    “Did anybody bother to say grace before y’all dived in here?” Gran asked.
    The table’s occupants looked at each other sheepishly, then bowed their heads.
    “Lord, have mercy on this motley crew,” Gran said, as she folded her hands and closed her eyes. “And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for each and every one of them. They are, indeed, precious in thy sight. Thank you for bringing Savannah home to us, safe and sound, and we ask you to restore Macon to us, just as quick as you can. Be with him in his hour of darkness and incarceration and bless this food. Amen.”
    For one blissful moment, there was silence. The only sounds Savannah could hear were Beauregard snoring on the back porch and the ticking of the cat clock on the wall.
    When Savannah was ten years old, she had saved her nickels and dimes for months to buy that clock for Gran on Mother’s Day. It had big green “diamond” eyes that shifted back and forth as its tail swung to and fro.
    At ten, she had considered the “cat clock,” as they called it, the height of glamor, class, and sophistication. And thirty years later, she still loved it, because the clock was Gran’s. And anything even remotely connected to her grandmother was sacred to Savannah.
    She reached over and patted the soft, work-worn hand and gave Gran a smile that was readily returned.
    Then, the three-second silence broke.
    “You pray too-o-o-o long, Gran,” Jillian said. “I almost went to sleep in my food.”
    Jack chimed in, “Daddy, if I go to sleep in my food, do I still have to eat it?”
    Butch growled, a chicken wing sticking out of the side of his mouth. “Eat it or wear it.”
    Yes, Savannah thought, there’s no place like home.
    And that just might be a good thing.

     
    Savannah and Alma stood at the kitchen sink, Savannah washing, Alma drying. At the table, Marietta and Vidalia were sitting, still nursing tall glasses of iced tea, discussing wedding details ad nauseum. Butch and Waycross had taken the kids—Vidalia’s four and Marietta’s two—into the empty lot next door to play a game of softball. Even Beauregard had stirred from his long summer’s nap to join the fun. He darted among the children and tall grass as enthusiastically as if he were hunting grizzlies.
    Glancing over her shoulder at her two sisters, Savannah thought of how Gran had once, kindly, described them. “Not exactly work-brickle, if you know what I mean.”
    But Gran was sitting in the living room in her gold leatherette recliner, reading her Bible by the light of an avocado-green pole lamp, circa 1968. As long as Savannah could remember, her grandmother had retired to that recliner after dinner to read her daily Psalm. Those few minutes were the only ones she had faithfully taken for herself every day. And the troops had been told, years ago, that she was only to be disturbed under two circumstances: the tourniquet wouldn’t stop the bleeding, or the fire extinguisher wouldn’t put out the blaze.
    “Gran looked tired tonight,” Savannah said to Alma as she passed a platter under the stream of rinse water and then handed it across to her. “I’m worried about her.”
    “Yeah, this thing with Macon is really takin’ a toll on her,” Alma replied, drying it with a dish towel with a chain of daisies and the word “Thursday” embroidered along the border. Another object that was sacred to Savannah; Gran had done the needlework. “She just can’t stand it when one of us is in trouble. Once she gets over being mad at us for whatever we done, she starts feeling bad, thinking she did something wrong when she raised us.”
    Savannah glanced over her shoulder at Vidalia and Marietta.
    “I’m just worried sick about this divorce thing of Lester’s,” Marietta was