Free The Sassy Belles by Beth Albright Page A

and I lay there, clutching the phone to my chest and
breathing in the morning air. I tried to exhale, pushing away the events that
were about to play out.
    I turned over in my bed and stared at the double crown molding.
I loved this old house. It was built in the 1800s. You know…one of those huge
old Southern homes with the sweeping, wraparound front porch. The ceiling fans
turned in slow motion all the time. I never turned them off. Slow-turning
ceiling fans were so inviting. To me they meant someone was home, cooking
something, the down pillows were all fluffed and waiting for you to rest your
weary head, iced tea and fresh chocolate cake were waiting somewhere in the
kitchen. The fans welcomed me home every night, even if the house was empty.
Somehow I believed they made the place feel full, awake and alive.
    Harry and I bought this house five years ago as a gift to each
other. It was for our fifth anniversary. We had lived in a little town house
near the campus up until then. We both loved this house from the minute we found
it that evening in November. It needed a little love, but it felt like home the
second we walked in the door. Harry and I didn’t say a word to each other…just a
glance and we knew. We could love this house into our home. Of course we walked
the whole house, holding hands, almost giddy with the rush of the future and all
it held tingling between us.
    There was a sweeping, curved front staircase, a wide and airy
front hall, two large parlors on each side, creaking wood floors and brick
fireplaces in nearly every room creating a fairy-tale ambience that I had never
felt anywhere before. Sleeping many nights with the dance of the firelight on
the walls was a comfort that is indescribable.
    Many a spring night we slept with the windows open. I loved the
seasons in that house. Each one has its own indelible fingerprint on my memories
of living there. I had hoped the house would be a new beginning for us. The year
before we moved in, when things had just started to become cold between us
around the time of the awful disintegration of Harry’s relationship with Lewis,
I still had a lot of hope for us. The house symbolized a new start. It never
really became that for us, but even lying in bed the morning after Lewis went
missing, I still loved it there. It was home for me.
    As I made my way to the shower, I decided to call Harry.
    “Hey, sorry about running off this morning. I didn’t want to
wake you,” Harry said. He sounded breathless.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “Seems like Lewis’s clothes, or someone’s clothes, washed up at the river last night…about fifty
yards up from the Cypress Inn.”
    “Have the clothes been tested yet?” I asked.
    “They are actually on their way to the lab, but we were
thinking maybe Vivi could ID them. We need to know if these were the clothes
Lewis was wearing when she was with him at the Fountain Mist. We’re still
waiting on the DNA results of the washed-up body parts, but this could
definitely get things moving.”
    “I talked to her this morning. She’s meeting me at Mother’s at
8:30.”
    “Sonny and the police are all already involved,” Harry said.
“I’ll meet you there, too. We should let Vivi know what’s going on. That way we
can warn her before she has to look at the clothes. There’s going to be a press
conference at noon.”
    I figured that would be next. Since Lewis was the
play-by-play… is the play-by-play announcer for
the Alabama Crimson Tide, the news of his disappearance would have the media in
a frenzy. See, Tuscaloosa is not just any football town. There are plenty of
college towns with good teams. But in Tuscaloosa, football is the town. Everyone there, whether they went to Bama or didn’t
even go to college, is a fan. There are only two seasons here—football and waiting for football. As soon as the season ends,
usually with us in the national championships, the town goes into what you could
almost consider a mourning