Carolina Mist by Mariah Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

out the last of the burnt crumbs.
    “Not if you want lunch,” Belle told her matter-of-factly.
    “Belle, you can’t live on tea and toast.”
    “Abigail, you can live on much less than that.”
    “This is ridiculous.” Abby shook her head. “I’m going upstairs to change, and then I’m going down to the store for some groceries.”
    “What a lovely idea.” Belle nodded slowly. “Abigail, while you are there, could you possibly see if Mr. Foster has any blackberry jam? Not the regular store-bought kind, the kind Annie Thurman makes and jars, if it isn’t too much? Young Foster will know.”
    No wonder the woman’s so frail, Abby thought angrily as she pulled a sweatshirt and jeans from her suitcase and slid into them. Living on the barest of necessities for who knows how long. Where in hell is her family?
    “What might you like for dinner?” Abby paused in the doorway.
    “Dinner?” Belle spoke the word as if considering a foreign concept.
    “Is there anything in particular you’d like?”
    “Why, whatever you think, Abigail.” Belle cleared her throat. “Though a roast chicken might be nice. I haven’t had roast chicken since Leila passed on. She did all the cooking, you know.”
    “Fine. Chicken it is.”
    Abby grabbed her jacket and purse from the chair in the front hallway, where she’d deposited them the previous night. She checked her wallet and found she was low on cash. Opening the glove compartment, she withdrew some bills from the envelope and relocked the compartment. It was as safe there, she surmised, as it would be anyplace else.
    She stopped a t the new gas station on the corn er. A tall, thin man in his early thirties dressed in jeans and a green and white flannel shirt came out to greet her.
    “ ’Morning.” He smiled, wiping his hands on a light blue towel tucked into his waist. “What can I getcha?”
    “Fill the tank, please.” She smiled at his open friendliness.
    “Check your oil?” He pronounced it “earl,” and she smiled again, unconsciously this time.
    “You still do that down here?” she asked.
    He nodded and went about his business.
    “You kin to Belle Matthews?” He watched Abby pull two five-dollar bills and three ones from her purse.
    “No,” she replied, puzzled.
    “Thought maybe you might be, since you were parked there”—he nodded up Cove Road—“early this morning.”
    “Actually, my great-aunt owned that house.” Abby grinned, reminding herself that in a town the size of Primrose, there were no secrets.
    “You the one she left it to? The niece from up north or someplace?”
    “Well, yes.” She nodded.
    “Welcome to Primrose, then.” He pocketed the money. “Guess you’ll be working on the place now. You planning on fixing it up and living there?”
    “I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do.”
    No need for anyone else to know before she could break the news to Belle that the house would be going on the market as soon as possible.
    “You might want to talk to Pete Phelps down at the hardware store. His son’s a good carpenter—you’ll be needing one for that front porch. Seems to me I heard that the building inspector was out there a few weeks ago looking around.”
    “Looking around at what?”
    “That one chimney on the side is leanin’ a little farther to the right than it should be. And the porch around that big turret looks like it’s about to detach. Guess they’ll”—he nodded toward town—“be glad to see you. They didn’t know what to do, what with Miz Matthews livin’ there and not ownin’ the place. You might want to stop at the town hall and let someone know you’re here.”
    “Thanks for the tip,” she muttered sourly as she rolled up the window and drove toward the center of town.
    Great. Not in Primrose twenty-four hours, and the building inspector’s after me. Guess I better take a closer look at the house when I get back.
    Abby parked along the sidewalk in front of the Primrose Cafe, where