Free Say You're Sorry by Sarah Shankman

holiday dinner: fried chicken, potato salad with sour cream (her secret ingredient), baked beans, and pineapple upside-down cake.
    “Honey,” Isaac had said, “you should have been a cook.”
    “I should have been lots of things. But I’m stuck with what I’ve been. It’s a little too late.”
    “It’s never too late, Loubella.”
    But she’d seen the look in his eyes, and she knew he could see what looked back at her from her mirror these days. She could smell it too. They both knew she was already holding hands with a bad-breathed lover, Mr. Death.
    Then they’d sat for a while on the porch playing gin rummy, right out in the open, not caring who came by. Not that Isaac had ever been big on sneaking and hiding, but in some ways he was circumspect. Not this day. Not this Fourth of July, which was also Loubella’s birthday. She was forty-six.
    “Lordy, lordy, who’d of thought I’d be getting so old?”
    “And so beautiful.” He’d kissed her and placed among the cards before them a little jeweler’s box.
    Inside was a diamond solitaire, a big sparkling beauty of an engagement ring.
    They smiled at each other, Loubella’s gold tooth shining like a ray of sunlight. They smiled, for they both understood the symbolism and yet knew that in that sense the ring didn’t mean a goddamned thing.
    For her lover was married, a Baton Rouge businessman who carried considerable weight, and he wasn’t about to toss over everything to marry a retired whore. Not that they would have had time to do that anyway, even though divorces could be had now in only six months. Both of them knew that Loubella didn’t have that much time left.
    She held her hand out before her now that he was gone, watching the diamond catch the fireworks’ light, admiring the token of his love like a sixteen-year-old girl. She savored both it and the favor she’d asked of him, which he’d granted—making the phone call without missing a beat.
    Loubella, she said to herself now, all in all you’ve had a good life.
    The whoring hadn’t gotten her, nor the drugs, nor the time in jail. She’d risen above them all like cream coming to the top. And these last few years with Isaac, tending her little house and the bar in his now respectable River City, they’d been all she’d ever hoped for, more than she’d ever dreamed.
    And in just a little while it would be over. For Loubella was not waiting for Mr. Death to name the time. She would do that herself. Not for her the long hoping and the slow snipping, a breast here, a womb there, all her hair falling out, what was left of her fading beauty gone, till there was nothing left but the tubes and high hospital bed and the drugs dripping into her veins, the drugs that didn’t quite smother the smells or the pain.
    She heard the big car coming even before she saw its headlights. She sat up straight and a tingle ran right down the back of her neck.
    Oh, it had been such a while since she’d seen her enemy’s face. This time was going to be so sweet.
    Now the heavy door of the Cadillac slammed, just once, which meant Blanche hadn’t brought her husband Aces with her. Well, it would have been nice to have them both, but Aces didn’t really matter. Blanche had been the hand behind the hand that turned the key that locked the door that kept her imprisoned eleven and a half years, almost one quarter of her life.
    “Evening, Blanche,” Loubella called from the steps. She had been sitting there for a while growing cats’ eyes and could see into the night.
    “Loubella?” Blanche stopped dead still as she recognized the voice.
    “Sure ’nuff. Come on in.”
    Blanche came closer now. Good Lord have mercy, how she’d aged! The golden girl was gone. And here in her place stood a middle-aged pouty pigeon in a blue dress that was too tight, stretched across the bulging stomach and the spreading butt. Ah, beautiful Blanche, Loubella thought, has all that barbecue caught up with you at last?
    “Isaac