A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

of you! When I have a second, that is,’ she added, to my relief.
    ‘Are you still in every club in town?’
    ‘
And
on a bunch of college committees, too. Got to support the old alma mater, and I have to do
something
while Ray’s gone!’
    Alicia’s energy was something of a legend. Underneath all the gush and flutter, which apparently she found necessary to assume, Alicia was actually a very efficient woman. Mimi had told me that in college Alicia had invariably made the dean’s list. But if Ray’s fraternity brothers mentioned that achievement to her, she would blink and giggle and tell them it must have been a fluke.
    ‘You know,’ our old friend was saying now with a great display of roguery, ‘Mimi was on every board at Houghton, and they finally gave up and started paying her for it. I’m just hoping that some day this town will give
me
a salary for running it!’
    ‘You sure deserve it,’ I murmured. I was tiring already. It had been a long time since I’d met Alicia broadside.
    ‘Ray and I are going to start working on a baby,’ she told us cheerfully. ‘He says that’ll keep me at home, if nothing else will. He thought buying our own house would do that too. But you know, I had the whole thing done over in no time.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ Cully said with a smile that robbed his words of any sting.
    Alicia looped her purse straps over her shoulder and moved to the door. ‘Nick, I’m just thrilled to death you’re back in town to stay. We’ll see you at the party Friday night. Ray’ll be back in time, and we’ll be here with bells on. You call me, Mimi, you hear? If you need any help!’
    All at once she was gone, leaving us standing in a daze, as if a tornado had passed close by.
    ‘Still the same,’ Mimi said with a grin of half-admiration, half-regret.
    I nodded. ‘What’s all this about a party?’
    ‘Oh, just some people you met when you used to stay with me, and some of the people from the college,’ she said smoothly.
    ‘Like the entire English faculty?’ I asked with suspicion.
    ‘Oh, don’t worry! Just the ones I really know and like. I’m not trying to butter anyone up for you.’
    ‘Oh. Okay,’ I said, feeling some doubt. ‘When is this going to be? What kind of party?’
    ‘It kicks off at eight, and from the length of the bar list, it’s going to be a drunken brawl,’ Cully interposed. ‘Listen, Mimi, are you sure this is everything you need from the store?’
    A list I hadn’t gotten to make. I eyed it sadly. Then I realized that Cully was going to the grocery for us, and I felt a jolt of amazement. I just couldn’t imagine Cully Houghton doing something as tedious and universal as wheeling a cart through the supermarket to buy groceries. It occurred to me that I had perhaps been idealizing Cully a wee bit all these years.
    ‘I’m sure,’ Mimi said firmly. ‘Listen, are
you
sure you’ve got the bar list?’
    ‘Right here.’ He pulled the edge of another list from his pants pocket to prove it to her.
    ‘Good. Thanks, Cully, that’ll save us time. We’ve got to get cracking on cleaning up this house, and we’ll have plenty for you to haul off to the dump, starting tomorrow.’
    ‘Maybe I should try to borrow Charles’s pickup?’
    ‘Good idea. Drop by his office and see if he’ll need it. Generally he just uses it on weekends.’
    There was a little something about the way Mimi smoothed her hair . . .
    ‘Charles?’ I asked, after Cully had left.
    ‘Oh, you’ll meet him at the party. I’ve known him forever,’ Mimi said nonchalantly.
    Right. Uh-huh. Here we go again.
    But I swore to myself I wouldn’t say anything. Mimi was always prickly in the first stages of any attachment. There are some lines even a best friend – or especially a best friend – shouldn’t cross. I’d upset Mimi in the past with my criticism of her choice of men, before I’d gotten wiser. That was why Mimi was being so clamlike with me now.
    I