Southern Fortunes by Amy Boyles

Author:Amy Boyles [Boyles, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LADYBUGBOOKS LLC
Published: 2019-02-11T06:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Betty was in bad spirits by the time we got home. She didn’t even pull out her corncob pipe and smoke a bowl of tobacco.

She must’ve felt horrible, y’all.

The whole scroll-knowledge thing was a touchy subject. Seeing as I didn’t want to broach it, I let it lie—at least with my family. Before we left the platform talk, I made arrangements with Deidre to speak with her about my family’s history.

I had to get to the bottom of this scroll business—one way or another.

“Betty, can I get you anything? Some cocoa or tea?” I pegged my purse and waited.

She rocked back and forth, staring at a spot on the wall.

I shot Cordelia a concerned look. “Betty?” I said louder.

Her head whipped in my direction. “Hmm?”

“Can I make you something to eat?”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I’ll be all right.”

“You sure?”

She didn’t answer. My cousins and I headed off to bed, leaving Betty alone to suffer in silence.

The next morning everyone sat silent and stony cold at breakfast. Their grim faces killed me. I mean, almost every morning Amelia and Betty argued about something. Usually it was that my cousin should grow her hair out or that Amelia should date a new wizard that just moved into town.

Both conversations burned Amelia’s biscuits so bad she always looked like she wanted to strangle Betty. But now the atmosphere resembled a funeral. Seriously. The only life in the whole place was Hugo chewing on a bone.

Worse, I had no idea what kind of bone it was.

“What’s Hugo eating?”

From the cauldron Betty ladled up what looked like a bowl of gruel. Okay, I didn’t actually know what gruel looked like, but if it was gray and resembled oatmeal but not quite, then that’s what I stared at.

Betty waddled over with a bowl. “I bought him a sack of bones from the barbecue place. He’s slowly working through them.”

I sniffed. “What is this?”

“Oatmeal.”

“It doesn’t look like oatmeal. There’s chunks of stuff in it.”

“Those are apples.” Amelia narrowed her brows as if to suggest I not ask any more questions because she and Cordelia had already found out all there was to know and I wouldn’t like the answers I received.

She was right. If those tiny yellow chunks floating in a sea of gray lumpy stuff were apples, then I didn’t need to know anything else.

I’d be eating breakfast out.

No one said anything as they gazed into their bowls. Their long faces wormed into my brain, trying to drag me down with them. There was no reason for my family to take Gilda’s words so seriously.

They needed perking up, and I knew just how to do it.

I laid my spoon on the table beside the bowl of yuck. “Axel says he’ll mate with me for life.”

All movement stopped. Cordelia’s lids fluttered as her gaze landed on me. Amelia’s jaw actually dropped. A small smile tugged on Betty’s mouth.

Looked like I had their attention.

Heat flushed my face. I hadn’t meant to reveal such personal information, but his words had stuck in my head for days now, and I needed to talk about it.

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