Reinventing Leona Read Online Free Page A

child and two blue-haired bookends waving the first place ribbon the last pastor’s wife won for her pickled peaches.
    “Do you can, dear?” Nola Gay had asked as she charged down the sidewalk.
    “No,” Leona reluctantly admitted, ashamed she was making such a poor first impression on what must surely be two of the charter members of their new congregation.
    “For crisp pickles, you must pick the short, chunkier cucumbers.” Etta May pointed to the dark green specimens stuffed inside a glass jar.
    “But not bloated, Sister,” Nola Gay clarified.
    Etta May nodded agreement. “Pick an overripe cucumber, and you will have mushy pickles for certain.”
    A sudden whiff of apple cider and cloves, the Storys’ trademark fragrance, acted as smelling salts, reviving Leona from her catatonic disconnect. How quickly the last eighteen years had passed. Where had the time gone?
    Life was short. Way . . . too . . . short. She remembered thinking these very thoughts the day she took her oldest to college and again two years later when she dropped off her youngest. Children growing up is a transition a person knows will come, a pain that can be prepared for. But becoming a widow before the closing prayer had never crossed her mind. Not ever.
    Blinking back tears, Leona dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue as the matching weathered faces hovering over her came into focus.
    Etta May’s stout finger poked Leona’s shoulder. “Aren’t the children coming home?”
    Leona bristled, her mind rifling through acceptable Christlike retorts. Get ye behind me, Satan came to mind, but she didn’t trust her tone in the delivery. So she nodded.
    “Sister, that Brewer woman told you at the door that David and Maddie were on their way.” Nola Gay leaned in close, her breath smelling of denture cream. She dropped her voice. “Do you think it wise to fraternize with an Episcopalian?”
    Clenching her teeth against her coiled tongue, Leona shrugged. Cucumber beetles had better survival odds in the old girls’ garden than she had of adjusting their conviction on who would or would not populate heaven. She took a deep breath, rearranging her irritation into a forced smile. “Nola Gay, why don’t you and Etta May help yourselves to the Coca-Cola cake Bette Bob brought over? I know how you both love chocolate. I think the ladies have set up the food in the dining room.”
    “Always thinking of others.” Etta May’s blue-tinged head bobbed in pleased admiration.
    Simultaneously the sisters dusted Leona’s shoulders, linked arms, then shuffled through the congested living room. “Bette Bob, where’s that chocolate?”
    Slumping on the couch like the limp dishrag she was, Leona chided herself. Why hadn’t she told those two busybodies what they could do with their opinion of her best friend’s salvation, and their infuriating implication that the preacher’s children were anything less than perfect?
    J.D. always said, “Leona, the day will come when you will have to choose between being a perpetual doormat or standing up for yourself.”
    Leona felt her insides tumble together and sink. She never expected today would be the day.

Chapter Four
    Only one woman could part a crowded living room as if she were Moses holding a staff over the Red Sea. But wiggling into panty hose with wet legs would be easier than picturing Roberta Worthington hobnobbing with God’s chosen.
    “Mother?” Freeing herself from Roxie’s protective grip, Leona rose from the couch. “How’d you get here so fast?”
    “This dusty spot in the road is only a two-hour drive from the city, Leona. If you came home more often you’d—”
    “Bertie.” Roxie flew to Leona’s side, russet hairs atop her head standing at attention like the ruff of a riled guard dog. “Nice to see you again. Can I take your coat? Get you something to drink?”
    Fire flared in her mother’s eyes, and Leona doubted if there was enough sweet tea in all of Mt. Hope to douse the flame