NaNoWriMo 2022
Heart in Turmoil
American Kingdom: Day 2.2
Previous scene:
Tour leader I may have been, but Marion and I took a back seat, listening as Brian led us along the route marked in my notes, liberally mixing tall tales and true as he went.
One of the stops was in a little overgrown graveyard beside an old church tucked away in a back street. Quiet and dim under ancient trees, the gravestones remembered Charlestonians of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. British and Confederate soldiers could be found there, their views and opinions as still and moribund as their bodies.
“Say what you like about their politics,” Brian mused, pulling aside a screen of leaves from the final resting place of a Confederate officer, fallen on some field far distant in time and space, “but when a man stands up to offer his life in the service of his people, he deserves some respect. This great nation was not built by those who stayed at home and read novels as they toasted their muffins by the hearth.”
“Hear, hear!” I said. Some of my own service had been a long way from home comforts. Cold MRE rations in a sandstorm, python steaks in a Florida swamp, fermented goats milk in a mountain village. I gave thanks every morning for bacon and eggs and grits and fresh orange juice.
Ted and his doxie caught up with us there. Her name was Sally, I remembered now, though I had mentally nicknamed her Bald Eagle.
I’d been thinking about this moment for some time. Like non-stop for an hour or so.
He wheeled his bike up beside mine.
“Honey, we need to talk,” he began.
For answer, I pressed the “Send” button on my phone. A text I’d prepared earlier. Two words and a photograph that had a simple unambiguous message.
Marion came between us.
“Who are you?” he said. “I’m talking to my partner.”
“I’m her lawyer,” Marion said, ice in her voice as she handed him a card. “If you want to say something, you can say it to me.”
My lawyer? When had that happened? Well, I wasn’t going to knock it.
Ted looked astonished. Between my two-word one-photo text and the sudden appearance of a lawyer, his day was probably looking a tiny fraction as lousy as mine.
Good.
Brian noticed what was happening and came over, looking Ted up and down.
Marion spoke up. “I’m taking Molly to get her arm looked at now. We’ll drop the bikes back later.”
“Her arm?”
“There was an accident. She sent you a message but you were busy, it seems.”
That was the end of Ted.
And the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Next scene:
The whole book (NaNoWriMo work in progress):
