The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,44

this heat. Night after night she’d find James Harris on their front porch and they’d exchange comments about that month’s book club book, or he’d ask what the latest update was on getting the air conditioner fixed, or how Miss Mary was doing, or he’d tell her he’d gone to church with Slick and Leland. Then she’d invite him inside for ice cream.

“How does he know exactly when dessert’s going on the table?” Carter complained after James’s fourth visit, hopping up and down on one foot while peeling off his sweaty socks in the bedroom. “It’s like he can hear our freezer door open all the way down the street.”

But Patricia liked having him there because Carter had only managed to keep his promise to be home before dark for two days before he started staying late at work again. Most nights she ate alone with the children, and because Korey was going to two-week soccer camp at the end of the month and apparently had to spend the night with every single one of her friends before she left, most nights it was just her and Blue at the supper table.

Around the fifth night James Harris stopped by Patricia started leaving the windows open later, and then she started leaving the upstairs windows open overnight, and then the downstairs windows, and before long she just left the screen doors on their latches, and the house throbbed softly with fans sitting in open windows all day and night.

The other reason she was glad James Harris came by was because she didn’t know how to talk to Blue anymore. All Blue wanted to talk about was Nazis. She’d helped him get an adult library card and now he checked out photograph-packed Time-Life books about World War II. She found his old spiral notebooks covered in drawings of swastikas, SS lightning bolts, Panzer tanks, and skulls. Whenever she tried to talk to him about his summer Oasis program or going to the Creekside pool, he always countered with Nazis.

James Harris spoke fluent Nazi.

“You know,” he said to Blue, “the entire American space program was built by Wernher von Braun and a bunch of other Nazis the Americans gave asylum to because they knew how to build rockets.”

Or:

“We like to think that we beat Hitler, but it was really the Russians who turned the tide.”

Or:

“Did you know the Nazis counterfeited British money and tried to destabilize their economy?”

Patricia enjoyed watching Blue hold his own in a conversation with an adult, even though she wished they would talk about something besides the Third Reich. But her mother had told her to appreciate what she had, not whine about what she didn’t, and so she let them fill the space that had been left empty by Carter and Korey.

Those evenings over ice cream, sitting in the dining room with the windows open and a warm, salty breeze blowing through the house and Blue and James Harris talking about World War II, were the last time Patricia felt truly happy. Even after everything that came later, when everything in her life hurt, the memory of those nights wrapped her in a soft, sweet glow that often carried her away to sleep.

After almost three weeks, Patricia found herself actually looking forward to Grace’s birthday party. She finally felt confident enough to go outside at night, even if it was just down the block, and Carter had promised to be home early and she felt like they could finally get back to normal.

* * *

—

The second Patricia and Carter were out the door, Mrs. Greene stepped out of her shoes and peeled off her socks and stuck them in her purse. It was too hot to have anything on her feet. Blue and Korey were spending the night out, and no one was home to care if she went barefoot or not.

The carpet felt hot beneath the soles of her feet. Every door and window in the house stood open, but the puny breeze that trickled in from the backyard was sticky and stunk of the marsh.

“You feel like eating something tonight, Miss Mary?” she asked.

Miss Mary hummed happily to herself. Mrs. Campbell had