(2008) Down Where My Love Lives by Charles Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

but when it did, Bryce's already dilated pupils grew as large as the end of a beer bottle. His eyes darted from side to side, he held up a finger and slowly shut the door. To call Bryce a friend, you have to be willing to live with a few eccentricities.

    The noises behind the door told us that Bryce was tearing apart the inside of his trailer, looking for a pair of pants. A few minutes later he opened the door, wearing a yellowed and stretched-out T-shirt-as a pair of shorts. He had shoved his boots through the armholes, hiked it up around his waist, and buckled a belt over it to hold it around his hips. The neck hole hung down around his knees and flapped when he walked.
    Bryce crept up to Maggie, knelt, and slowly placed his ear to her stomach like a safecracker. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his ear farther into her stomach. Maggie is more ticklish than any human being alive, so the pressure of his forearms on her ribs and his ear pressed against her tummy started her to giggling. With Maggie laughing, Bryce could no longer hear whatever he was listening for, so he squeezed tighter. The crescendo grew, and thirty seconds later, Maggie was laughing so hard and wiggling around so much that Bryce just picked her up off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder like a duffel bag, and continued listening while Maggie flung her feet and laughed hysterically.
    "Bryce Kai MacGregor!" she said, pounding him on the back.
    Bryce set Maggs on her feet, nodded as if satisfied that there actually was a baby in her tummy, and held up his index finger again. He disappeared into the trailer, only to return half a minute later holding a beer and two dirty Styrofoam cups. After popping the tab, he poured half a sip in Maggs's cup, a full sip in mine, and kept the remainder for himself.

    Beneath the shadow of the silver screen, Bryce raised his can, we clinked Styrofoam to aluminum, and the three of us drank to our son. We set down our cups and started walking toward the fence when Bryce shouted after us. "Maggie, what's your favorite movie?"
    All true Southern girls have only one favorite movie, and they've all seen it ten thousand times. It's stitched into their persons like sinew and veins, and if you listen close enough, they'll whisper dialogue from entire scenes in their sleep. When it comes to their education, Scarlett O'Hara may have as much practical authority as the Bible. Maybe more.
    Maggs curtsied beneath an imaginary dress and batted her eyelids. Dragging out her sweetest Southern drawl, she said, "Why, Rhett Butler!"
    Bryce looked at me for interpretation, but I just shrugged. "You're on your own, pal."
    Bryce scratched his head, and pretty soon the Ohhh look spread across his face as the lightbulb clicked on.
    A couple weeks later, the UPS man delivered two oversized boxes to our front porch, saying they had been drop-shipped direct from the manufacturer-one that specialized in Southern plantation period furniture.
    I looked at the box and wondered if Maggs had taken her nursery shopping on-line, but she read my face and said, "Don't look at me. I had nothing to do with it."
    We cut away the cardboard and there, mummified by eight layers of bubble-wrap, sat a handmade and hand-oiled rocking chair with matching foot cradle. Finding no card, and wanting to make sure it was ours, we called the manufacturer and spoke with the owner. He told us that a man who was definitely not from south Georgia called and asked if his company could build nursery furniture for a Southern lady who already owned a crib but little else.

    The owner responded, "Sir, we can build most anything if you can give us an idea of what you want." The next day they received an express package containing a videocassette.
    Want to guess which one? Handwritten instructions scribbled on a yellow sticky note told them to "take notes and furnish the nursery, minus the crib." The buyer paid them double to speed manufacturing and delivery, so