A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

withheld my sigh until I reached my bedroom. Then I heaved it to the mirror, as if I were practicing ‘Exasperation’ for a pantomime. We’ll just see about
Charles
, I told myself grimly while I changed into my oldest cutoffs and my T-shirt with the paint stains. Reserve judgment, Nickie.
    Mimi had excellent taste in clothes, furniture, jewelry, and (of course) friends, but she completely lost that taste when it came to men. Husband Number One had at least been harmless; Mimi had just gotten tired of packing ice chests with beer for fishing trips and whooping it up at fraternity parties. Richard had been more dangerous; an effete would-be painter who lived on an allowance from his parents – who could well afford it, granted. But he too had never denied himself an impulse, and his impulses, unlike Alicia Merritt’s, were apt to be rather nasty. There’d been others she hadn’t married, of course. I remembered best the cadet who had painted a glowing picture of an army officer’s wife’s life, and the budding rock star who’d wanted to have a baby (via Mimi) and name the child Acidstar.
    At least apprehension about Mimi’s latest involvement temporarily smothered my curiosity about what Cully had been going to tell me before Alicia and Mimi had come into the living room. I had the distinct feeling that whatever it was, it was something unpleasant.
    * * * *
    For the remainder of that day and the bulk of the next two I hadn’t time to think of anything but Comet, Future, and Glass Plus.
    After we’d taken the kitchen apart and put it back together, we turned our attention to the long living room that extended the width of the front of the house as the kitchen extended the back.
    Mimi had tentatively arranged my heavy desk and bookcases in the empty dining room across the hall from my bedroom, but the living room was so scantily furnished that we had to move them back out to fill one corner. My two couches and chairs, which had filled my apartment in New York rather tightly, looked like an island perched around the fireplace at the right side of the living room. In despair, we lugged down a couple of chairs and a table of Mimi’s that blended with my stuff well enough. The result was passable.
    Then Cully began to haul boxes and other moving debris, and we began to cook.
    Of course Attila and Mao went wild in this maelstrom of upheaval. They’d scarcely had time to adjust to the move from Mimi’s former home. The cats dashed between our feet, pounced out of odd corners, and got shut in closets for indefinite periods. Thursday evening, when I called the two to supper and only Attila responded, Mimi leaped from her chair as if she’d been electrocuted and pounded up the stairs at full speed. She returned in a minute, her nose red with incipient tears, clutching Mao to her chest.
    ‘I just remembered the last time I’d seen her she was asleep in my underwear drawer, and then I pictured myself putting the wash away and shutting the drawer without even thinking about it,’ she explained in a shaky voice. ‘Oh, God, she could’ve suffocated!’
    To Attila’s intense indignation, Mao had an extra treat for supper that night. Mao accepted her close brush with death quite placidly. In fact, when I asked Mimi if the cat had been frantic when she opened the drawer, Mimi told me rather stiffly that Mao had still been fast asleep.
    Cully was a great help; which, like his grocery shopping, surprised me – until I realized that he’d never watched
me
lift a finger to do anything practical, either. When he and Rachel had dropped by my apartment on their infrequent visits to Rachel’s family in New York, I’d of course had the place spotless hours beforehand.
    I volunteered to go to the dump bins with Cully on Friday morning, since his load was especially heavy. I perched up high in the pickup that the mysterious Charles (whose last name I discovered to be Seward; occupation, lawyer) had obligingly donated. It had been