Church’s Ladies’ Quilt, Maxine Fortenberry told me Miss Caroline had combed every family record she could unearth to identify their benefactor, and she was still mystified at the family’s good fortune.
She didn’t seem to have any qualms about spending the money, though.
Even Terry Bellefleur, Portia and Andy’s cousin, had a new pickup sitting in the packed dirt yard of his double-wide. I liked Terry, a scarred Viet Nam vet who didn’t have a lot of friends, and I didn’t grudge him a new set of wheels.
But I thought about the carburetor I’d just been forced to replace in my old car. I’d paid for the work in full, though I’d considered asking Jim Downey if I could just pay half and get the rest together over the next two months. But Jim had a wife and three kids. Just this morning I’d been thinking of asking my boss, Sam Merlotte, if he could add to my hours at the bar. Especially with Bill gone to “Seattle,” I could just about live at Merlotte’s, if Sam could use me. I sure needed the money.
I tried real hard not to be bitter as I drove away from Belle Rive. I went south out of town and then turned left onto Hummingbird Road on my way to Merlotte’s. I tried to pretend that all was well; that on his return from Seattle—or wherever—Bill would be a passionate lover again, and Bill would treasure me and make me feel valuable once more. I would again have that feeling of belonging with someone, instead of being alone.
Of course, I had my brother, Jason. Though as far as intimacy and companionship goes, I had to admit that he hardly counted.
But the pain in my middle was the unmistakable pain of rejection. I knew the feeling so well, it was like a second skin.
I sure hated to crawl back inside it.
Chapter Two
ITESTED THEdoorknob to make sure I’d locked it, turned around, and out of the corner of my eye glimpsed a figure sitting in the swing on my front porch. I stifled a shriek as he rose. Then I recognized him.
I was wearing a heavy coat, but he was in a tank top; that didn’t surprise me, really.
“El—” Uh-oh, close call. “Bubba, how are you?” I was trying to sound casual, carefree. I failed, but Bubba wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. The vampires admitted that bringing him over, when he’d been so very close to death and so saturated with drugs, had been a big mistake. The night he’d been brought in, one of the morgue attendants happened to be one of the undead, and also happened to be a huge fan. With a hastily constructed and elaborate plot involving a murder or two, the attendant had “brought him over”—made Bubba a vampire. But the process doesn’t always go right, you know. Since then, he’s been passed around like idiot royalty. Louisiana had been hosting him for the past year.
“Miss Sookie, how you doin’?” His accent was still thick and his face still handsome, in a jowly kind of way. The dark hair tumbled over his forehead in a carefully careless style. The heavy sideburns were brushed. Some undead fan had groomed him for the evening.
“I’m just fine, thank you,” I said politely, grinning from ear to ear. I do that when I’m nervous. “I was just fixing to go to work,” I added, wondering if it was possible I would be able to simply get in my car and drive away. I thought not.
“Well, Miss Sookie, I been sent to guard you tonight.”
“You have? By who?”
“By Eric,” he said proudly. “I was the only one in the office when he got a phone call. He tole me to get my ass over here.”
“What’s the danger?” I peered around the clearing in the woods in which my old house stood. Bubba’s news made me very nervous.
“I don’t know, Miss Sookie. Eric, he tole me to watch you tonight till one of them from Fangtasia gets here—Eric, or Chow, or Miss Pam, or even Clancy. So if you go to work, I go with you. And I take care of anyone who bothers you.”
There was no point in questioning Bubba further, putting strain on that fragile brain. He’d just get upset, and you didn’t want to see that happen. That was why you had to remember not to call him by his former name . . . though every now and then he would sing, and