“Squirrel. Now that’s good eating,” eighty-year-old Marvella Tucker mused aloud, looking up from her rapidly emptying plate. “My mama used to make the best squirrel and dumplin’s ever. Her dumplin’s were so light they near floated off’n the plate. You ever hunt any squirrel, boy?”
Wade and Clay looked at each other, trying to decide which one of them she had addressed. Wade finally seemed to conclude that she was talking to him—correctly, Emily thought with a stifled smile. To Marvella, anyone under fifty was a boy.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ve done some squirrel hunting in my time. I used to hunt with my dad when I was a boy back in Alabama. But, as I said, I prefer fishing these days.”
Marvella turned her attention back to her meal.
“Are your parents still living, Chief Davenport?” Bobbie inquired.
“Call me Wade,” he suggested. “And no, they’re both gone now. I lost my father when I was twenty and my mother passed away a couple of years ago.”
His wife and both his parents. Wade had suffered many losses in the past few years, Emily mused, feeling that they had even more in common than she’d originally believed.
Bobbie wasn’t finished with her less-than-subtle interrogation. “Do you have any siblings, Wade?”
“A sister, Pamela. She and her husband live near Birmingham with their three kids.”
“You going to ask him his social-security number next, Bobbie? Let the boy eat.”
Marvella’s dry interjection caused Caleb to laugh aloud, while the others struggled against smiles. Bobbie looked torn between being amused and offended. Amusement won out.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she assured Wade. “I just like to get to know people.”
He nodded. “No offense was taken, Mrs. McBride.”
“Bobbie,” she corrected him.
Emily was all too aware of how closely Wade was sitting to her. She was right-handed, he left-handed, so their arms occasionally bumped. Though Wade murmured a polite apology each time, Emily wondered if the contact was always entirely accidental.
She knew that her reactions to his touches were hardly ordinary. Each time, her pulse tripped, her throat tightened, her breath hitched slightly in her throat. She only hoped that none of the too-perceptive observers around her—most particularly, Wade himself—not
iced her embarrassingly juvenile behavior.
She was all but hyperventilating over the man, for goodness’ sake. In front of her relatives and her minister!
“What’s this I hear about you selling your house, Emily?” Jennie Tatum asked curiously, looking as if she’d been waiting for the right opportunity to broach the subject.
This was probably the juiciest piece of gossip that had hit Honoria in weeks, outside of the food fight at the fall festival. Emily imagined that everyone would be speculating about her plans.
“Yes,” she said, wondering how many times in the next few months she would conduct this same conversation. “A four-bedroom house on twenty acres is more than I want to keep up for myself.”
Marvella clucked her tongue. “That property has been in your family for generations, Emily. Are you sure you want to let it go?”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought, Marvella. This is what I want to do.” Emily spoke with a firmness that was as much meant to convince Wade as the others, since she didn’t want him to reconsider his interest in the house.
But Marvella didn’t look reassured. “Family history is so important, dear. Are you sure you want to just give yours away? What about your own children? Haven’t you considered hanging onto the place for their sakes?”
“I don’t have any children, Marvella,” Emily reminded her gently. “And I’m not giving my home away. I’m selling it.”
“Yes, and I’m going to make sure she gets a fair price for it,” Caleb inserted.
Wade chuckled. “No doubt,” he murmured.
“Where are you going to live when you sell your house, Emily?” Brother Tatum asked. “Do you have a place in mind?”
“I’m considering my options,” Emily replied vaguely. She knew very well what would happen if she admitted that she had no plans beyond getting away from Honoria. They would be horrified. Poor, parentless Emily, on her own in the big, bad world with no one to guide her.
“I told Miss Emily she can live with me and my daddy,” Clay said, speaking up for the first time since the conversation had begun. “We’d like that, wouldn’t we, Daddy?”