Tomorrow's Vengeance by Marcia Talley Read Free Book Online

worried.
    Resolute
’s enormous sails gradually receded into the distance. I waited until they were a speck of white on the horizon before returning to the parking lot where I’d left my car.
    I’d arranged to meet my erstwhile partner in crime for an early lunch at Blackwalnut Hall. When I arrived, the lounge was hopping. I’d clearly walked into the middle of a book club discussion. Six women sat in a conversational grouping around a square table littered with coffee cups and plates – licked clean of all but telltale crumbs – three well-thumbed paperback copies of McHenry’s
The Kitchen Daughter
and two Kindles. A chess game was in progress at a table set into a window nook, and another pair of residents sat in overstuffed chairs that flanked the fireplace, that – in deference to summer – had been filled, not with firewood, but with a pyramid of colorful glass balls.
    An elderly couple cuddled on a sofa, a walker parked close by. As I passed, the woman kissed her companion’s cheek. He captured and squeezed her hand, causing the cartoonish Seabee tattooed on his upper arm to flex its wings.
    Naddie wasn’t in the lobby, and when I asked, the receptionist hadn’t seen her. I settled into an empty chair between a dozing man and a woman reading the Bible and prepared to wait. I selected an issue of
People
magazine from the fanned-out array on the coffee table that separated me from the two young lovers. How could I not? ‘Royal Baby Joy!’ screamed the headline, but the article inside was disappointingly slim on facts about the newly arrived successor to the British throne.
    Across from me the elderly woman giggled, and I looked up from the Royal Baby Gift Guide I’d been perusing. ‘You go first,’ she said.
    â€˜No, you go,’ the man replied.
    Her elbow nudged him playfully in the ribs. ‘If you go, I’ll go.’
    He took his time considering the offer. A full minute passed before he said, ‘OK.’ He stood, pulled her to her feet and together they wandered over to the piano bench and sat down.
    I watched, an amused smile on my lips, as she rested her fingers lightly on the keys. ‘What do you want me to play?’ she asked her companion.
    He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
    â€˜You choose.’
    A shoulder bump. ‘No, you.’
    At this rate, any concert was going to be a long time coming.
    â€˜OK,’ the woman said at last, and began to play, singing in a slow, but slightly wobbly soprano:
‘“The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day.”’
    â€˜I can’t believe it,’ the woman on my left muttered, laying the Bible down on the crocheted afghan that covered her knees. ‘That word’s so offensive!’
    â€˜Darkie, you mean?’ I said, although I knew quite well the word to which she was referring.
    The singer began the second verse, singing from memory, her voice growing sweeter, stronger and more confident as she went along.
    The woman holding the Bible leaned in closer and whispered, ‘It’s racist.’
    â€˜Well, to be fair,’ I whispered back, ‘it’s been over one hundred and fifty years since Stephen Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” so we should probably cut the man a little slack.’
    â€˜They should change it,’ she insisted.
    â€˜They did,’ I told her. ‘In Kentucky nowadays, it’s summer and the
people
are gay.’
    â€˜Really?’ she said. ‘The people are
gay
? Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement to me.’
    The gentleman on my right had apparently overheard our conversation. Just as the singer launched into the chorus, joined by practically everyone in our vicinity, some singing in harmony, he leaned across me. ‘Well,
I’m
gay,