Free Duplicity by Peggy Webb

looked up and smiled at her across the heads of her relatives. It was an electric smile that hit her with a shock and seared its way into her heart. It was a smile of kinship, of one deceiver to another. And it was a smile that made her wonder if he, too, was suffering from a case of the lonesomes.
    "Eat your corn before it gets cold, Uncle Vester," she said. "I think I’ll try a piece of Aunt Fronie's chocolate cream pie."
    It was Fronie's chocolate cream pie that started the whole thing. Renowned in Lawrence County for her cooking, Fronie was particularly famous for her cream pies. Her sister Lollie even admitted to a streak of jealousy over Fronie's cream pies, but she knew better than to ask for the recipe. Fronie guarded her cream pie recipes as closely as she would have guarded a mink coat if she had one— which she did not.
    She'd always secretly wanted one, but she publicly said that nobody except Davy Crockett ever wore fur in Tennessee. Everybody knew, of course, that Fronie's statement was sour grapes.
    The table Ellen approached was practically buckling under the weight of food. Honey-glazed hams, fried chicken, pork and dumplings, competed for space with an assortment of delicacies that would have made a French chef green with envy. There was enough food to feed all the Stanfords, and still have enough left over for half the population of Lawrence County. Except for Aunt Fronie's chocolate cream pie. She noticed that there was only one piece left, and Aunt Fronie was guarding it like Fort Knox.
    She's still a handsome woman, Ellen thought as she came close enough to see the satin-smooth skin and the red hair, like her own, carefully twisted into a knot on top of Fronie's head. She knew Aunt Fronie took as much pride in preserving herself as she did in creating her famous pies.
    "Aunt Fronie"—Ellen kissed the old woman's cheek—"I've come for a piece of your pie."
    Fronie pinched Ellen's cheek. "Lord, honey, you're even more beautiful than your mama was. And that man of yours ..." She rolled her eyes and grinned. "Well, I said to Lollie, he ought to be in the movies. Rich, too, from what Vester tells me. When are you two tying the knot?"
    "We haven't set the date yet." Ellen crossed her fingers behind her back as one more strand of untruth was added to the web of duplicity.
    "A man like that, driving in the Grand Preakness and all . . . well, who knows what's on his mind," Fronie said.
    Ellen smiled. Her aunt never could get horse racing and automobile racing straight.
    "I wouldn't wait too long if I were you," Fronie went on. She took a funeral-parlor fan from her straw purse and swatted at the flies that were taking an interest in the picnic food. "About that pie, honey. I'm saving it for Dirk."
    So he's made another conquest
. She supposed she should be happy that the deception was working so well, but suddenly it occurred to her that it wasn't supposed to work that well.
     She had just wanted to get through this reunion without all the questions about when she was going to settle down and find a man. The way things were going now, her relatives would tar and feather her when she announced that she no longer intended to many their hero.
     A gleam of mischief came into her eyes as she hastily devised a new plan.
    She reached across Aunt Fronie's waving fan. "There's no need to save the pie for Dirk." She scooped it onto her plate and leaned over to whisper confidentially into her aunt's ear. "You know how I love doughnuts. Aunt Fronie?" Her aunt nodded solemnly. "Well, the last time we were out together, he ordered half a dozen and didn't give me a single bite. I could have died. He certainly didn't need them. You should have seen him before he lost all that weight."
    She tried to keep a straight face as she deliberately added clay feet to everybody's hero.
    Aunt Fronie's fan skipped a beat as she digested the news, and Ellen decided that the plan was working beautifully. She didn't know why she hadn't