Sweet Gone South by Alicia Hunter Pace Read Free Book Online

to wear to Alexander’s fraternity spring formal. That dress was false advertisement and the shame that she’d had the audacity to buy it was overwhelming.
    She’d had no idea where she was going, but anywhere was better than here. She drove to Memphis, got a room at the Peabody, and cried herself to sleep.
    Lanie had often wondered how her life would have turned out if what followed hadn’t happened. Would she have spent a few days on self-pity and then picked herself up and gone back to school? Maybe. But she’d never know.
    She awoke in the wee hours of the morning with cramps and blood on the sheets. At first she’d thought she had started her period. She had never been regular and it was past time. But the cramps were too severe and there was too much blood. At the emergency room, she’d had the presence of mind not to turn over her insurance card. This was something she was not going to want her parents to know about because, though she hadn’t known she was pregnant, she knew she was having a miscarriage. When the bleeding didn’t stop and the doctor began to talk about emergency surgery, Lanie finally accepted the offer to make a call. Shame wouldn’t allow her to call her parents. She was six years older than the oldest of her four younger siblings and had always been held up as an example. Alexander was out of the question. She was considering one of her sorority sisters when it hit her.
    Her happy place was where she’d spent a week every summer — her grandmother’s candy shop with its gleaming display cases, good smells, and happy customers. She made the call without hesitation and Henry and Clarice Heaven were there when she woke up, holding her hands when the doctor told her she would probably never conceive again.
    So that was it.
    There would never be an engagement ring, white dress, and someone to hold her at night when it stormed. There would be no companionable Christmas mornings, sharing of Sunday morning newspapers, or fighting over the last piece of pie. Worst of all, there would be no babies.
    Her grandmother cried with her and her grandfather threatened to kill Alexander. Then they’d paid her hospital bill, promised to keep her secret, and took her home with them. Somehow, her grandmother had made her parents believe she had mono and she was better off with them. The plan everyone made for her was that she would withdraw from school, spend a few months in Merritt, and go back to school the summer term. But she had a different plan. No, she had no plan, but she wasn’t going back to Ole Miss. She had to find another life. There was no way she could finish her early childhood education degree. Pursuing a career that would remind her daily of what she couldn’t have would be torture.
    Then she found a blog by someone who did ultrasounds on dolphins in the Caribbean. All it took was a two-year tech course, and there was a school in Florida. Her parents were befuddled but they agreed to pay for it. Only it wasn’t like she thought it would be. Luckily, she found that out before it was too late to get most of her tuition back. So she left Florida.
    From there she’d spent several years moving around, making false starts, and looking for something she could bring herself to care about. At first, she’d used the money left over from Ole Miss and the ultrasound course. When it ran out, she asked for more and got it. She signed up for random classes in practical things like interior design, horticulture, and massage therapy. She seldom finished one. She wasn’t good at any of it.
    When none of that seemed right, she’d moved on to the arts. She spent a year in a small arts community in North Carolina where she tried to throw pots, quilt, make stained glass, knit, and master calligraphy. The idea of leading a sparse, uncomplicated life pursuing beauty was appealing until her parents announced they weren’t going to give her any more money. This, Lanie knew, was an attempt to force her to