Free The Angel Whispered Danger by Mignon F. Ballard

to oblige.

    “So, what did you think of Uncle Ernest’s new love interest?” Marge asked our grandmother after Belinda left.
    “I’ve seen her from a distance, but she’s just as pretty up close,” Ma Maggie answered. “I can see why Ernest is taken with her, but she seems a little shy. I guess all of us being here at once must’ve overwhelmed her.”
    “Poor Ella’s accident unnerved all of us,” I said.
    “I doubt if she’ll lose any sleep over what happened to Ella,” Violet said. “No love lost between those two.”
    Marge took a folding chair from Deedee and opened it. “What do you mean?”
    “Couldn’t stand being in the same room together. Atmosphere as thick as cold oatmeal, and about as pleasant.” Violet picked up the cat and stroked it. “Maybe it’s my imagination, but I couldn’t help but feel it. Ella sometimes sat with me when she came to church, but since Ernest started coming with Belinda, she sits on the other side of the sanctuary. It’s obvious there’s something going on.”
    Deedee snorted. “Surely she’s not jealous! Bless her heart, Ella Stegall’s eighty if she’s a day.”
    “Uncle Ernest isn’t far behind,” Marge reminded her. “Maybe the two women met somewhere before, had some kind of run-in. I hate to say it, but poor Ella’s kind of like a bottle of wine missing its cork. Gets more vinegary every day.”
    “I expect she just resents another woman’s presence,” my grandmother said. “Ella’s been running the show now for over forty years—ever since Rose left.”
    “Before Rose left,” Violet said. “She lived in the guesthouse then, but did most of the cleaning and cooking.”
    I laughed. “Then that explains why Rose left!”
    Parker and Cynthia arrived soon after that and we ate a rather subdued supper on the porch—or as subdued as it could be with three active boys and two little girls who didn’t get along. Cynthia, seated next to Josie, monopolized the conversation with details of the “simply super” party she’d been to, and how her mother had said
she
could have a real dinner party when she turned eleven—with boys and everything.
    “Why?” my daughter asked, stuffing potato chips into her mouth.
    I could see relations were only going to go downhill from there, so I was pleased when after supper Burdette suggested the children catch lightning bugs on the lawn. The girls weren’t too receptive to the idea at first, but when twilight deepened into dusk and the first winking glows flickered in the trees, even Cynthia decided it might be fun to try. And as we sat on the porch watching the children play, and listening to their laughter, I almost forgot for a little while what had happened earlier.
    “Look at them,” Deedee observed. “I haven’t seen Cynthia act like that since she was little.”
    “She’s still little,” I said. “She’s a child. What’s your hurry?”
    Deedee didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see her face in the dark. I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but she’s rushed that little girl from babyhood like a bear was behind her.
Two, going on twenty-two
, my cousin would say when somebody asked Cynthia’s age. Or,
three, going on thirty
.
    How different we were! Sometimes I longed to stop the clock on Josie and keep her a little girl for a while longer—although not lately, I’ll admit!
    The lightning bug game soon turned to tag, then hide-and-seek, and we were getting ready to call the children in from their play when Darby came running to tell us there was somebody moving around in the orchard with a light.
    “You’re probably just seeing lightning bugs,” his mother said, leading a protesting Hartley inside.
    “No. No! It’s a flashlight,” Darby said. “Josie saw it, too. So did Cynthia.” The two girls confirmed that this was true.
    Burdette waded into the middle of them. “You all wouldn’t be pulling my leg, now, would you? That was a bad thing that happened to poor Ella today. I don’t