Read Cold Tea on a Hot Day for Free Online Page A

if word had come of her son, whipped the door open to see standing there her tall and sturdy Aunt Vella.
    “Hello, sugar. I’m sorry, I’m not Willie Lee.” Her eyes, all sympathetic, went beyond Marilee to the sink strewn with the stuff out of the medicine cabinet. “What are you doing?”
    “Looking for any of my old pills. I don’t have any, though. I threw them all out.”
    “Well, yes, you did. I was here that day. Now, I’ve brought you what you need—a big chocolate shake.”
    “Chocolate?”
    “Yes, sugar…it’s in the kitchen.”
    “Bless you.” Marilee threw herself on her aunt, who hugged her tight and then kept an arm around her all the way to the kitchen, where her mother saw and frowned. There had always been animosity between Marilee’s petite mother and her statuesque Aunt Vella, who was her father’s sister.
    Marilee disengaged herself from her aunt and satdown, taking up the large paper cup and spooning the thick shake into her mouth. Her Aunt Vella and Uncle Perry owned Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, and Aunt Vella knew exactly how Marilee liked her chocolate shakes, with an extra squirt of chocolate syrup.
    Then Marilee saw that Corrine had her own shake, too. Corrine’s black eyes met Marilee’s for an instant, in which Marilee summoned forth an encouraging smile from the place mothers always keep them. She had forgotten about her niece and wanted to make up for it. The child had enough of being forgotten in her life.
    Corrine quickly looked away, though, as if needing to protect herself.
    “Well, I have to go,” Marilee’s mother said. “I have to get Carl’s supper.”
    “That’s okay…there’s nothing you can do here.” God forbid Carl’s supper be interrupted. Marilee breathed deeply.
    “You call me as soon as you have news…and I can come back down.” She was edging toward the door, and turned and told Parker, “Good seeing you, Parker—you call me if Marilee needs me.”
    Parker nodded politely, wisely not committing himself.
    “Vella, it was good seein’ you.”
    “Norma…”
    Different as night and day, the two women managed to tolerate each other.
    For a second Marilee’s mother hovered uncertainly, and then she patted Marilee’s arm and stroked Corrine’s dark hair away from her forehead, saying, “Honey, can’t you clip your hair out of your eyes?”
    Marilee saw Corrine quietly keep sipping her milk shake, while beneath the table her legs swung about ninety miles an hour.
    “Well, I’ll get with you this weekend about the tires,” Marilee’s mother said before leaving.
    Marilee played the straw around in her milk shake and suffered guilt at the thought of telling her mother to cram the tires up her ass.
    Vella, feeling the need to be polite and thoroughly cover the annoyance she always felt in the other woman’s presence, hopped to her feet and escorted her ex-sister-in-law to the front door. And needing to make certain the woman did indeed get out the door. It was, Vella thought as she saw her ex-sister-in-law get into her car, a great failing on her part that, after all these years and the death of her brother, Norma Cooper should still have the power to irritate the fire out of her.
    When she returned to the kitchen, Parker was massaging Marilee’s shoulders and joking with Corrine, producing a rare smile from the child. Although she had always found Parker Lindsey vaguely wanting, Vella thoroughly admired the way he could lighten a moment when he put his mind to it.
    Marilee said to her, “Don’t you have the Rose Club meeting tonight?”
    “Yes. And I’m going. There’s plenty of time. Perry can get supper over at the café, and I can go straight to the meeting from here.” Perry always took himself off to the café, if he came home and she wasn’t there and no supper was on the table. Then he would come home, turn on the television and fall asleep in his La-Z-Boy.
    She went to the counter to unpack a grocery sack from the