Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries
Page 42
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A haphazardly taped flap of the box that held every piece of her wedding china began to slowly curl up, as if repelled by its own adhesive powers. Darla watched it from the kitchen table, where she was in the process of packing another box. She carefully placed a ten-inch ceramic Madonna and child, which she and Gary had found on their honeymoon nine years ago, in a nest of tissue and newspaper. The Madonna’s head was cocked as if questioning her. Are you really going through with this?
Darla tried to imagine this box, with its fragile, hidden prize, in the bowels of some rusting tramp steamer making its tedious, laborious way across the Pacific Ocean, past atolls, uninhabited islands, radiation-cooked archipelagos, and ancient shipwrecks to the lonely little apostrophe of a country in the middle of the sea at the bottom of the world.
The house was quiet this afternoon. Although she had been tempted to keep her daughter home for company, Darla had allowed Haley to spend the night with a friend. The weeks were racing away when Haley would still be able to see her friends and Darla couldn’t deny her.
“Your father and I would move without batting an eyelash,” her mother, the stereotypical Army wife, had said earlier in the day when she had called to see how the packing was coming. “Guam, Germany, California...”
“I know, Mom,” Darla had said, “but you and Dad did your moving before we kids were born.”
“So? We certainly didn’t plan it that way. The service won’t let you, you know. You go when and where they tell you to go. And Gary needs to do this for his career.”
Darla had wanted to rip the phone out of the wall. Was everyone ready to see her in a covered wagon, forging ahead to some primitive new land...at the bottom of the world? “He doesn’t even have a job down there. He’s just doing it out of fear.”
“Darla, a wife should support her husband. Not snipe behind his back.”
Darla wanted to weep, and she had already done plenty of that. She shoved another empty box onto the kitchen table and began rummaging around for more newspaper. Some days she thought she could really make it work, could stop fighting with Gary about it and just get in step with him. Other days, she cried.