A Place We Knew Well by Susan Carol McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

Johnson’s Rambler. In the office, Steve was packed up, ready to go, and smoking a cigarette. He gave Avery a wary look. “Sarah okay with this?”
    “She was tied up on the phone, couldn’t talk, so I came back.”
    “Think she’ll be okay?”
    “We’ll work it out,” Avery said.
    I hope so,
Steve’s look said.
    Fifteen years running and his wife and his best friend still seemed unable to fathom each other. Although Steve thought Sarah classy and attractive, he misjudged her natural reserve as stiffness, her wry sense of humor as arrogance. And while Sarah admired Steve’s work ethic, she often mistook his habitual gruffness for deliberate rudeness when, in fact, the guy was all bark, no bite. It was ironic, Avery thought—or was the word
sardonic
?—that the two people who knew him best so often misunderstood each other.
    “I was thinkin’ ”—Steve flicked ash into the desktop tray—“they usually put the girls in a convertible for the parade. Charlotte can ride in The Admiral, if she’d like. And I figure Leo can borrow it for the dance.”
    Avery hiked his eyebrows and rocked back on his heels in mock shock. The Admiral was Steve’s pride and joy. A jet-black, cherried-out ’59 T-Bird with custom red leather bucket seats; a special-order, 430-cubic-inch, four-hundred-horsepower Super Marauder engine; plus three two-barrel Holley carburetors. It was the envy of every hot-rodder in town.
    Steve shrugged. “Just a thought.”
    Avery smiled. For all his bluster, Steve could surprise you. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
    Steve peered out at the renewed rain and ground out his smoke.
    “You heading out now?” Avery asked.
    “Good a time as any, I s’pose.”
    “My regards to Miss Lillian,” Avery called in lieu of good-bye.
    Although he’d never laid eyes on Steve’s lady friend, Avery knew she was a nurse who lived on the coast in New Smyrna Beach. They’d met at one of Steve’s “Don’t Drink” meetings and shared a passion for surf fishing, baseball, and races at the new Daytona Speedway. That summer, in fact, she’d somehow arranged for Steve to be in the pit for local hero Fireball Roberts’s back-to-back wins at the Daytona 500 and the Firecracker 250. Steve had come back flush with speed- and power-boosting secrets from Roberts’s mechanic, Smokey Yunick, plus a bunch of track trivia: Like the fact that Fireball’s nickname sprang from his blistering fastball as a star pitcher at Apopka High. And that Roberts didn’t mind the fans applying it to his fearless racing style, but his friends called him Glenn, and the other drivers called him simply, respectfully, Balls.
    Avery had relished the inside scoop, but worried that Steve was planning to make a move. At summer’s end, he’d asked Steve directly, “You considering the coast full-time?”
    “Nah,” Steve said. “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
    Watching his friend drive off, Avery wondered, had two divorces soured Steve on marriage forever? Whatever happened to “third time’s the charm”?
    —
    J UST AFTER SIX, A VERY surrendered the station to Emilio—“She’s all yours, son”—and drove home through the pouring rain. As usual, he made a beeline for the master bathroom to shower, shave, and change for supper. In the kitchen, he saw the dinette was set for two.
    “Where’s our girl?” he asked Sarah.
    “Oh, a few of the twirls came over to help fold brochures, and after they got word that tonight’s game was canceled, they all went off to see that new Pat Boone movie—
State Fair,
I think. Going to the Steak ’n Shake after.” She set a plate of steaming tuna noodle casserole with a side of green beans in front of him.
    Avery, suddenly starving, spread his napkin in his lap and waited for her to do the same. She’d brushed her hair, he noticed, left it loose the way he liked it. She’d put on fresh lipstick, too, but her eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue, her face drawn and tired.
    “Tough