Stardust A Novel by Carla Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

putting it to use on your schoolbooks.” And then he ushered me out the door and slipped me a nickel. “Go have yourself some ice cream now.”
    Each year I dreamed up a new excuse to ask Mr. Salazar to help me find my parents, and sure as the sun sets over Hixon Bayou, he evaded me. The last time I’d asked him was two weeks before my marriage to O’Dell. And that time he’d called me into his office.
    He set me down and lit up a cigar. “Georgia, I’ve been like a father to you, guiding you whenever I saw the opportunity—”
    “All you’ve ever done is avoid my questions and pat me on the head. I could’ve used some fatherly advice now and then, but all my life I’ve wanted to know one thing and one thing only. Why did my parents leave me?”
    He blew smoke in the air, and I knew then he was thinking up another excuse not to answer me. Instead, when the smoke thinned and my patience had gotten even thinner, he leaned over. “I asked you here for two reasons. One: Why in the name of thunder are you marrying O’Dell Peyton? I thought you had better sense. You could go to secretary school or even the University of Texas if you wanted. Instead, you’re marrying a boy with no more ambition than to run his daddy’s fishing boat up and down the bayou—”
    “What may seem like idle fishing to you is O’Dell’s way of planning his future. He has his sights set on bigger things. You don’t know him like I do.”
    “And how’s that, Georgia?” He picked up the cigar and leaned back. “Please don’t tell me you’re in a family way.”
    The look on my face gave him the answer. I was eighteen years old and almost five months pregnant. I’d been dating O’Dell my senior year, and what I’d done was stupid, no doubt.
    “He loves me and told me nothing would happen if it was my first time.”
    “I take back what I said earlier. O’Dell has two sterling qualities: fishing the bayou and he’s a cockamamie salesman.”
    His tone dripped with sarcasm, but I leaned over and looked him in the eye. “You said you asked me here for two reasons. You’ve stated your dismay at my upcoming marriage. So be it. What was the other reason?”
    “You didn’t allow me to elaborate before you jumped in with your accusation of why I wouldn’t tell you about your parents. If you’re old enough to be married—and I have doubts, my dear—then perhaps it’s time to tell you what I know of Justine and Gordon Mackey.”
    The oxygen in the room fled, swallowed up by the cigar smoke and the great hunks of it I’d inhaled, leaving me now with a head that swam with dizziness and a heart that galloped like a racehorse through my chest. My spine straightened, and I waited.
    Mr. Salazar was no doubt amused as he waved his fingers through the air and said, “By last count, Justine is wanted in three states for failure to appear after being charged with drunk driving. Her husband, Gordon, whom you call Father, has been divorced from Justine for twelve years. If my calculations are correct, that would put the demise of their marriage around the same time as your arrival in Mayhaw. His whereabouts are unknown.”
    The possibilities piled one upon another in my head. Alcohol, divorce, skipping from one state to another. The fairy tale of one day being reunited with them in a clapboard bungalow with a tire swing in the front yard had screeched to a terrible halt. Aunt Cora’s declarations that my momma had done me a favor by dropping me off in Mayhaw settled over me like the final pounding of a judge’s gavel. My destiny had never been mine to choose. Aside from getting myself in a family way, as Mr. Salazar put it.
    And that was the thought uppermost in my mind the day Hugh Salazar’s call came. Since O’Dell’s family used Skaggs Whiting as their attorney, I discerned Hugh’s call had nothing to do with O’Dell. When he asked me to come in at ten the following morning, I asked what was going on.
    “Now, Georgia, I don’t