Miss Julia Happily Ever After: A Novel by Ann B. Ross

Author:Ann B. Ross [Ross, Ann B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Latisha herself was curled up on the sofa in the library watching cartoons on television. She was dressed and ready for another day at the Boys and Girls Club, although she was in a sour mood at our lateness.

“I don’t know why,” she told Lillian, “y’all sit up half the night just talkin’, then make somebody else late for what they have to do.”

“You’re not all that late,” Lillian said. “Go on an’ get in the car.”

Latisha flounced out, mumbling about probably missing the midmorning snack. I was surprised that she wasn’t in a better mood since Lillian had told her that Mr. Dobbs had chosen to marry someone else. Knowing that, she shouldn’t have been in such a prickly mood. Unless, I thought with a start, Lillian had had second thoughts and was still counting herself as a contestant in the marriage sweepstakes.

It was just one more thing to worry me, for the previous night’s visitation was weighing heavily on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why my house? Did the man know that Sam was gone? Or had it been Lillian or, Lord help us, Latisha in whom he’d been interested? Before this had happened, I had about talked myself out of attributing what I’d seen that rainy night to the naked man. I had decided that what I’d seen had been something stirred up by the storm.

Now, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe what I’d seen then had been merely a glimpse of that which Lillian and I had seen in all his glory the past night. Surely there weren’t two men in town who had the urge to put their private parts on public display.

But if there was only one, was the past night his first or second call at my house? The worrisome thing about it was this: If it had been his second visit, what had drawn him back again?

Later that morning I slipped into Lloyd’s bedroom at my house. He lived, of course, with his mother and Mr. Pickens in Sam’s old house, but occasionally he spent the night with us. I kept his room ready for him, although using it now and then as a guest room and often as an office since he had set up his old computer there for me.

Not being technologically adept, I had nonetheless learned that Google was quicker than a visit to the public library when there was something I wanted to know. And that morning I wanted to know all there was to know about people who engaged in public indecency. First of all, I learned that it’s almost always men who divest themselves of clothing and put themselves on display. That was a revelation in and of itself, although I realized that I’d never heard of a naked woman wandering around peering into other people’s homes.

I sat back in the chair and stared at the screen. Could that be due to the fact that women could satisfy any deviant urges by wearing

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