Just great.”Īnd that was all she’d given me. By the smile she gave me, she knew I was fishing, and the old woman said, “Oh, he’s fine. You’d figure I would know you can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and Miss Pearl had a lot more experience bullshitting than I did. He’d already warned me of that on Saturday when he’d woken up at my house and then went ahead to spend half the day with the boys and me, hanging around before he took off to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital.īut he hadn’t told me where he was going, and so I kind of snuck in, “Is he okay?” That’s when they’re letting me out of this joint.” “Dal left, but he’ll be back by Wednesday, he said. “I heard.”īefore I could ask who she’d heard that from, she continued on. Sitting down in the chair beside her bed, I reached up and placed my hand over her cool one. Dal says I’m bored and like to push people ‘cause of it.

“You saved my life, Diana, and I never told you thank you-” Well, that wasn’t the positive statement I’d been expecting to get.īut she’d kept going. “Half my house burned down, but I’m alive.” In a faded mint-green hospital gown, and with her hair limp and flat against her scalp, she’d blinked those milky blue eyes at me and sighed. “How are you doing, Miss Pearl?” I asked the elderly woman after I’d set the vase of flowers I’d bought her at the grocery store on the table in front of her bed. When I wasn’t at the salon or moping around at home, holding my burned hand up high and cussing at it, I went to visit Miss Pearl at the hospital, who was being held there because of all the smoke she’d inhaled and she’d gotten a few burns too. I couldn’t afford to take off a week, but I absolutely couldn’t take off more than three. Come hell or high water, I was going to be back at work in three weeks.

Best-case scenario seemed to be three weeks.

I spent those first couple of days going to the salon to reschedule my appointments and talk to Ginny about what she could do while I was out for a while.

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