Bright Lights From A Hurricane by Grace McGinty

Author:Grace McGinty [McGinty, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-14T06:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R N I N E

P R A I R I E V I L L E , L O U I S I A N A

Ispotted him immediately. Not because he stood out much in the well-to-do Prairieville crowd, although he was wearing a three piece suit which is odd carnival wear in ninety degree weather. No, he stood out because I’d known him since I was four.

When he made it to my ticket booth, we both stared uncomfortably for a heartbeat. Frederick H. Boseman was a world class lawyer, Harvard Alum and my father's most trusted advisor. My stomach knotted. His arrival was a bad omen.

“Are they okay?”

Frederick, and it was always Frederick and never anything as vulgar as Fred or heaven forbid, Freddie, looked pained for a moment.

“They are both in perfect health. I am here on their behalf.”

I slumped down onto my chair with an odd sense of relief and trepidation.

Then I thought better of it. It was best we had the looming conversation in private.

I plucked the radio off my belt. “Ruben, can you please have someone cover for me at the Bumper Boats for twenty minutes? Over.”

“Is everything okay? Over,” came the crackling response.

“Everything’s fine, just have a private matter that I need to attend to real quick. Over.” Let him think that meant some kind of mystical women's business.

“Sending Lorna now. Over.”

I clipped the radio back to my belt. “I’ll meet you at the concession stand in ten, Frederick.” He nodded once, and strode off to the other end of the midway. Lorna arrived a minute or two later and I excused myself quickly.

My pulse was pounding, and anxiety shortened my breaths. It wasn’t that Frederick frightened me; on the contrary, I’d always liked Frederick. Well, maybe “like” was too strong a word, but I had always respected him. He was a career man like my father, but had never attempted to marry to advance that career. That made him a better person than my parents in my books. He never spoke down to me, listened to my opinions, and when I was little, he always bought me a doll for Christmas.

No, my anxiety was because I knew what was about to happen.

Subconsciously, I had been waiting for it since I left.

I spotted him at one of the folding tables underneath a striped umbrella, two bottles of chilled water sitting in front of him.

“Hello, Olivia. You look well.”

“Thank you, Frederick. The hard work has done wonders for me, I think.”

“You know, I lived on a ranch for one summer during college. I just wanted to see how people lived when they didn’t have to go to a million charity dinners and cocktail parties and all the other rigmarole that comes with being born into wealth. It was the hardest, longest but most satisfying summer of my life. Not that I told anyone that. When I returned to college I made jokes about backwards hicks and dumb cowboys, or just pretended I had been travelling Europe for the summer.

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