Free Shivaree by J. D. Horn Page A

away.
    “ ‘But I say unto you, ’ ” she called out after him. “ ‘That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.’ That day’s comin’ quicker than any of you fools around here think.”

EIGHT
    Corinne could remove shrapnel, stitch up a wound, and perform a thousand and one other acts to save a life. Her future mother-in-law had not taken any of these talents into account when judging Corinne on her, at best, rudimentary cooking skills. Ava hadn’t exactly banished her from the kitchen, but she’d relegated her to performing the most basic of tasks. Luckily, her skill with a scalpel helped her make short work of peeling five pounds of potatoes, and her experience with removing stitches served her well when it came to prepping string beans. They worked in near silence; Ava’s cautious welcome seemed to have curdled as quickly as cream with lemon juice.
    Corinne had expected a barrage of questions about her past, her family, and how she had come to choose a career rather than immediately settling down. But Ava didn’t ask her about any of this. In fact, Ava hadn’t shown even the slightest bit of curiosity regarding the woman her only son was soon to marry. Corinne decided to break the ice. “How did you and Elijah’s father come to meet?”
    Ava stopped rolling piecrust and gave her a shocked, almost angry look—her eyes open wide, her eyebrows pinched together. Her lips parted, then zipped bac k together into a tight, thin line. She gripped the rolling pin with such fervor that her knuckles whitened and started to attack the pastry. “That was so long ago, I hardly see as how it matters now.” She dusted her hands once more with flour and whipped the dough off the pastry board, parachuting it into the pie tin. “I don’t know what it is like in San Francisco, but I think you will find that folk around here don’t take kindly to being asked personal questions.”
    “I’m sorry.” Corrine startled in her chair. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just trying to get to know you better.” Though she knew she had put her foot in it somehow, she couldn’t begin to understand how. “I thought you might enjoy reminiscing . . .”
    “Young lady,” Ava said with a tone of exasperation, “you will learn that in these parts, if someone wants you to know something, you won’t need to ask. They will share it with you when they are good and ready. And we don’t get to know people overnight either. We take our time to build relationships. You’re marrying my son. That means you will be sticking around for a while. There is no rush for us to become better acquainted.”
    “Perhaps I should go unpack,” Corinne said. Ava answered her with a curt nod toward the exit.
    Corinne made her way out to the sleeping porch. She retrieved her suitcases from the floor and sat them on the larger of the two beds that dominated the space. The family had stationed a battered pine chifferobe up against the wall that separated the interior of the house from the porch. She surmised that it had been moved here for her temporary use, as it effectively blocked the kitchen window behind it. Roman shades had been hung above the screened openings to offer her privacy. Or perhaps they’d been put up without her modesty in mind; they seemed to be a permanent fixture. Regardless, they were rolled up now, affording Corinne a good view of her future-in-laws’ property. The modest, white two-story frame house itself had been built on an unimpressive hill, but the surrounding countryside was pleasing to the eye. The field behind the house descended at a gentle slope to a body of water too small to be called a lake, but much larger than what Corinne would have considered a pond. Her clothes clung close to her skin in the humid air, and she longed to strip down and dive headlong beneath the surface of the crystalline water. Perhaps Elijah would take her there after he’d finished with