Free Sweet Gone South by Alicia Hunter Pace

No one had to know. It was food. It was better than sending her to school hungry.
    “No! CIRCLE WAFFLE!”
    It was no longer a question of getting her to school on time. It was question of getting her there at all with anything in her stomach. He began to pull food from the cabinets and refrigerator. Muffins, applesauce, cheese, Jell-O, hotdogs, chips, yogurt — she would have none of it.
    Somewhere along the way, Emma climbed out her chair and began marching around the kitchen, chanting, “CIRCLE WAFFLE, CIRCLE WAFFLE, CIRCLE WAFFLE!”
    “Emma.” Luke gripped her shoulders. “Where did you eat a circle waffle?”
    “Lanie gived to me!”
    Well, of course, yesterday morning while he was at Rotary. Lanie Heaven
would
be at the bottom of this, with her long legs, small waist, enticing bosom — and her ex-football star boyfriend.
    Luke ran across the hall and pounded on Lanie’s door, praying this was one of the rare mornings that she hadn’t gone down to the shop at sunrise. When she answered the door, she was dressed for work — blue stripes with yellow lollipops.
    “Luke?” She looked him up and down and frowned. So he was barefoot and in his sleep clothes — just like she’d been last night.
    “Do you have a circle waffle?” Emma’s chanting could be heard in the background.
    “A what? I don’t know what you mean.”
    “For God’s sake! A circle waffle! Did you give Emma one yesterday? Do you have another one? I’ll give you fifty dollars for it!”
    “Oh!” Understanding spread over her face. “Sure. Wait here.” She returned with an open box of frozen waffles and a bottle of syrup.
    “I guess I owe you fifty dollars,” he said.
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “Thanks.” He turned to go.
    “You owe me two hundred dollars. There are four left in that box.” He spun to meet her eyes. She laughed that laugh. “I was kidding, Luke.
Kidding
. Take the waffles.”
    Out of three nannies, surely one would be the one.
    • • •
    To have gotten off to such a shaky start, Luke’s day had turned out well. He’d handed down three decisions that he felt good about and the DA had pled out a case that had no business being tried in a courtroom. He’d paid Lanie’s new employee, Phillip, to return the casserole dishes and pie plates across town, so he didn’t have to deal with that. When Jill St. Clare called to thank him for returning her dish and asked if he wanted to join her and “a few other people” for dinner tonight, he’d managed to turn her down without being rude — though he’d wanted to be. Didn’t these people know he still felt married? Now, all he had to do was pick up Emma from the birthday party and, with any luck, this time tomorrow, he’d have a nanny.
    He was almost out the door when the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up but he didn’t sit down.
    “Judge? This is Tiptoe Watkins out at the cemetery.”
    Did Olive have no concept of call screening? He’d fire her, if he had the guts.
    “Yes?”
    “Etheline Martindale is out here again setting out tomatoes and planting corn on her daddy’s grave.”
    Good God!
“And that’s a problem for you?” Judges were supposed keep their tones neutral.
    “If you owned a cemetery, would you want vegetables growing on your graves?”
    “Uh, I guess not.” Judges weren’t supposed to say “uh.”
    “I can tell you, you would not. It’s undignified is what it is. You have to have dignity in a cemetery. Truth be told, I don’t think old Judge Martindale would take kindly to cornstalks on his grave. But Etheline has tried to do it every spring for twenty-four years.”
    “Well, Mr. Watkins — ”
    “Call me Tiptoe. Judge Gilliam did.”
    “All right. Tiptoe, if you want to have her arrested or get a restraining order, this is not the proper channel.”
    “Oh, no, no. Nothing like that. I don’t want to scare Etheline. I just don’t want her harvesting tomatoes and corn from my cemetery come July.”
    “Then