Love Mercy Read Online Free Page A

her by the word rather than the 150 dollars she received for each column.
    Soupçon. It meant a very small amount. She imagined a photo of one of the café’s white soup bowls holding a teaspoon of bright red tomato soup, maybe a dented Campbell’s soup can next to it? No, too Andy Warhol. Besides, she didn’t really know what she was trying to say: that soup, which symbolized food, was too expensive? No, not a good thing to put out there when she was contemplating raising the prices at the café. Still, she liked the way the word sounded. And even better, it was a single word. It could be her shortest column ever. But the idea needed work.
    She looked down at Ace, who’d followed her to the window, wagging his soupçon of a tail, still hoping for a walk. She bent down and ran her hand along the white, airplane-shaped marking on the black ruff of his neck, the reason Cy had named him Ace. She scratched the top of the dog’s nubby butt, making him grin like a wolf.
    “If this girl is my granddaughter, she should have given me a soupçon of warning about her visit, don’t you think?” Ace cocked his head, his dark, shiny eyes giving her an intelligent look that always made her wonder if he’d one day answer her in a thoughtful Timothy Dalton voice.
    When Cy was first diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago, he bought Ace from a breeder in Paso Robles. Always a planner, he told her he didn’t want her to be alone after he was gone. Ace, true to the corgi breed, was a handful from the beginning, and he’d accomplished what Cy had desired, forcing Love to go outside for walks and games of ball even on days when she would have just as soon stayed in her pajamas with the curtains closed, brooding about the unfairness of life, mad at God, uncontrollable cancer cells, drunk drivers and every happy person in the world. Yes, her husband was wise in bringing this crazy little dog into her life.
    Still and all, you old coyote, she scolded Cy in her head, I wasn’t any less sad when you left me. He isn’t you .
    “Well, flyboy,” she said to the dog. “Looks like we’ll be having us some company. If she is who we think she is, anyway.”
    How long would this girl want to stay? What did she want? Would she understand why Love hadn’t been in contact all these years? The sad truth was, her granddaughter had only heard her mother’s side of the story. Heaven only knew what the girl thought of her grandma Love.
    Karla Rae had never liked Love or Cy much, probably because they hadn’t been very discreet about their displeasure over her and Tommy’s impulsive move to Nashville.
    Tommy had met Karla Rae when she was working as a cocktail waitress at a Los Angeles hotel where he was attending a Farm Bureau convention. She’d come to California with a band, which broke up shortly after they arrived when the lead singer landed a solo gig. After knowing each other only three weeks, Tommy and Karla Rae were engaged. They married a month later under the same scarred oak tree on the Johnson ranch where Cy and Love had said their second marriage vows, shortly after his return from Vietnam. Their first legal wedding had been at the little brown church in Redwater, Kentucky, where they’d met.
    In Tennessee, Tommy found work with a local cabinetmaker, and Karla Rae, with her decent if unremarkable Sunday morning soprano voice, made the rounds on Music Row and haunted open mike nights in the city’s numerous bars. They had two babies in two years and a third one four years later. Tommy called Love and Cy, thrilled each time, but with each child, Karla Rae seemed to sound perpetually more sullen. She’d not gotten any closer to her dream than singing cover songs in tourist-filled honky-tonks.
    After Tommy’s funeral, there had been a small gathering at their rented house in Nashville. Her father, who lived in Ohio, had sent flowers but couldn’t take off work. Karla Rae’s mother had died years before. That made Love a little more