Read Mockingbird for Free Online Page B

the shape of his ears, of mental retardation.
    We loved Mary Jo to death, but we didn’t show her to strangers much.
    I let her help me set out some more plates and silver for the guests and then took her outside, still talking, around the edge of the house to an area of the garden away from the main throng. All Mary Jo could talk about was the will. “Did you ever notice that she changed it, Toni?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œNever told you to call a lawyer for her in the last month or two?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDagnabbit,” Mary Jo said glumly. We stood together in the shadow of the west fence, looking up at the leaves of the small palm tree that shaded the kitchen window. Our palm trees aren’t like those willowy, anorexic things you see on TV shows shot in Los Angeles. In Texas we grow them short and plump and pretty, like the waitresses in a good Tex-Mex joint.
    â€œI told her I was going to need me a piece of change to get my roof fixed,” Mary Jo said. “Darn thing leaks all the time now. Every time it rains, the drips come down the insides of my walls.”
    Having the Widow mount me had taken its toll; even hours later I felt tired and empty inside. “I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what’s in the will, Mary Jo.”
    â€œI know what’s in the will,” Mary Jo snapped. “’Less she changed it, anyway. Ain’t any of us going to know. She had her lawyer put it under court seal. She told me she didn’t want anyone looking at it, even us.”
    â€œYou’re kidding. No, you’re not. That would be just like Momma. Lord only knows what secrets she thinks she has left,” I said. “Well, she’s welcome to them, and any money too. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Mary Jo. Momma wasn’t the saving kind.”
    â€œWell, you’re right and you’re wrong both, Toni.” She looked at me. “Aren’t any of you children going to miss her like I do,” she said. I started to speak but she held up her hand. “I ain’t saying you didn’t love your momma, you especially, Antoinette. But you won’t miss her like I will. You got your sister and your daddy. I got nobody. Not one soul.”
    â€œMary Jo. I—” She held up her hand again, and I stopped because she was right. Her husband was lost and her son never wrote, and I could not pretend to be lonelier than her.
    â€œSo what did the Widow have to say, honey?”
    I stared at her, shocked. “How did you know?”
    â€œSmelled her on you. You think I don’t know that smell, the number of times I picked your momma up after the Riders dropped her on her fanny?”
    â€œOh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know what the Widow said. I wasn’t there. Ask Candy.”
    But Mary Jo shrugged, losing interest. “I doubt the old horror told how to fix my roof,” she said.
    Greg, our childhood friend from across the street, showed up just after dark. “Sorry I’m so late,” he said. Typical Greg, that: apology without explanation. He dropped his linen jacket on the coat tree and tapped the door shut behind him with one foot. Greg had spent a lot of energy learning juggling and stage magic in his early twenties, and though it never made him a living, I always thought it suited him well, physically. He moved in lovely, graceful, unexpected ways, frequently doing different things at once; for example, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek while pulling a bottle of red wine from behind his back. “What stage are you at? Fear, denial, depression? Bargaining?”
    â€œI thought acceptance was supposed to be in there.”
    â€œNope. Too soon. Don’t kid yourself.” He held me by the shoulders and studied my face. “You look dreadful.”
    â€œGee, thanks.”
    â€œNo, I mean it. You look like you ran a marathon. Have you not been