came in and began pouring chicken feed into the feeders, they greeted him with gentle little clucks.
“And a good morning to you,” he said, then grabbed an egg basket from a peg on the wall and gathered over two dozen eggs from the nests. He set the basket out in the breezeway and went to fill up the chickens’ water. He scattered some grit and crushed oyster shells as supplements, then picked up the eggs and headed back to the house, where he left all his rain gear on the porch and headed inside with the eggs.
“Wow, we’re getting quite a few eggs now every day, aren’t we?” Hope said as he set the basket on the counter.
“A little over two dozen this morning. I’m going to change clothes and get my raincoat,” Duke said.
“Are you going to see Cathy Terry?” Hope asked.
“I might, why?” Duke asked.
“I thought I’d send a dozen fresh eggs if you were,” Hope said.
“Okay, sure. Get them ready. I’ll take them by,” Duke said, and left the kitchen.
A short while later, he was clean and dry, wearing his good raincoat and the waterproof cover over his Stetson when he picked up the eggs and the grocery list.
Jack and Hope were nowhere to be seen, and Duke guessed they were going to take advantage of having the house all to themselves while he was gone. Hope was really good-natured about the Talbot brothers’ living arrangements, but Duke knew the day might come that she and Jack wanted a house of their own.
He settled the eggs onto the floorboard of the pickup and headed out of the drive, glad for the heavy layer of gravel all the way to the blacktop that would take him to the highway into Blessings.
* * *
Mercy Pittman was up to her elbows in flour at Granny’s Country Kitchen, turning out her famous biscuits as fast as the oven could bake them. On a normal day, Granny’s was the place for locals to congregate at breakfast time, even if they’d already eaten at home first. They could always drink another cup or two of coffee and have some biscuits and jelly. But when rain interfered with all the people who normally worked outdoors, they came to Granny’s.
Mercy was just putting two more huge sheet pans of biscuits in the oven when the power flickered.
Everyone in the kitchen gasped. The ovens and the flattop grill were gas, but the diner needed power for everything else. But before they could panic, Lovey’s son, Sully Raines, who had begun helping her run the café, came flying into the kitchen.
“It’s all good! I had that generator wired into the power here last week, remember? If the power goes out, the generator will kick in.”
Mercy sighed with relief. “Oh, that’s right! Thank goodness.”
He gave her a thumbs-up and then headed back to tend to business.
While Granny’s was safe from power outages, the same could not be said down at the Curl Up and Dye.
Ruby Butterman, who owned the hair salon, was a little nervous. Vesta was already in the middle of coloring her first client’s hair, and her twin sister, Vera, was rolling perm rods into her client’s hair. Ruby’s first customer was due in at any moment, and there would be a hair disaster of tragic proportions if the power went out.
When the power flickered, Vesta gasped. “Oh Lord, Lord! Please don’t let us lose power!”
Mabel Jean, the manicurist, was doing a mani-pedi on Clara Jordan, the Baptist preacher’s wife, and when Vesta called on the Lord, the preacher’s wife took it upon herself to beseech Him some more.
“Let us pray!” Clara said.
Mabel Jean froze, right in the middle of a down stroke on one of Clara’s fingernails.
Vera’s client immediately jerked and lowered her head, causing Vera to lose hold of the paper and the curl she was rolling up. The little white perm rod went flying one way, and the paper the other.
Vera sighed. She had no option but to follow along.
Ruby sat down in the chair at her station and bowed her head, too. She’d been to luncheons when the preacher’s wife said the blessing, and knew this was going to take some time. Clara had a tendency toward sermon-length prayers.
Fortunately for everyone, Clara hadn’t been praying more than a couple of minutes when the bell jingled over the front door. Ruby’s customer had arrived, and as fate would have it, Clara was right in the middle of taking a breath when Ruby jumped