Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

We’d come to the outskirts of town, the place where crop fields gave way to low-rise buildings. A service station. A small grocery store. A couple of houses in need of repair with lawns in need of fertilizing. “I’ll pull in here,” Westley said, indicating the service station. “Do you need to go in?”

I took one look at the building—white brick that hadn’t seen a hose or even a shower of rain in who knew how long. Single-pane windows looking into the office, cloudy with prints; the painted-white concrete black with oil. The bay doors had been shoved up and appeared to be hanging on for dear life.

“No,” I said, then grabbed my purse from the floorboard. “Not even if my bladder was about to bust.” I dug around until I found a brush, a tube of flavored lip gloss, and then flipped the visor to reveal the mirror.

“See?” Westley said. “You look fine.”

I shook my head. “I’m hideous,” I said, pulling the brush through my hair as if it had done something wrong.

“Come on now,” he said to me, then craned his neck to call to one of the grease monkeys who’d stepped away from the bay where a car had been raised. “We’re good,” he said with a wave of his hand. “My fiancée just needed a moment.”

“All right,” the man said. “No problem.”

I pause, watching him return to the elevated car. “I can’t go meet DiAnn’s grandmother looking like a Raggedy Ann doll, Wes.” His low chuckle earned my attention. “What?”

“You called me Wes. That’s a first.”

“Well, you call me Ali …”

He reached over and pinched my chin. “You’re a mess, you know that?”

I sighed. “I just want to impress her.” I flipped the visor and looked at him. “I don’t even know her name.”

“Mrs. Knight. I told you that last night.”

Heat rose from my belly. “I can hardly be expected to remember the details of last night,” I said. For one, after my final declaration of love, Westley had kissed me so long and so hard I may have possibly lost brain cells, leaving them scattered with the ashes along the firepit. And for another, I’d never had more than a glass of wine in my life … until last night, when I’d consumed close to three. Between the alcohol and the kisses and the headiness that comes from days like that, my whole body had gone languid. My brain to mush. I looked up. “Looks like rain.”

“I’ll raise the top.”

I waited until it clicked into place to ask, “And she’s nice?”

Westley leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’ll adore her.”

Chapter Ten

I’d never seen anything like it, this palace Justine Knight called home.

Justine. Miss Justine, as I came to call her. Which was also what the maid who answered the door called her.

A house with a maid. The full-time, dressed-in-a-uniform kind that I knew about from the movies and television, and from a handful of books but had never experienced firsthand. The kind that came once a week, yes. Those I knew. But not this.

The woman who answered the door at Justine Knight’s house was something else entirely. Black cheeks overly blushed but flawless, hair styled in soft curls around her face, apron strings pulled a little too tight around an ample but not large middle, and an aura that let you know she may not be in charge, but she was surely second-in-command.

“I reckon y’all are the ones here to have lunch with Miss Justine,” she said not two seconds after one of the stained glass double doors at the top of the wide steps jerked open. She peered up at the sky. “Come on in before it goes to raining. I ’spect it might any minute now.”

Westley placed his hand on the small of my back. “I’m Westley Houser and this is Miss Allison Middleton,” he said, his voice taking on a formality I’d never heard, much less expected, from him. “And, yes, Mrs. Knight is expecting us.”

“Well, y’all right on time, too. And if you know Miss Justine, you know she don’t like folks arriving late or unannounced.” When she stepped back, Westley all but pushed me into a foyer I was willing to bet I could fit my entire house in. One that was, for sure, beyond anything I’d ever expected to see. A floor of black marble swirled and feathered in white. A massive table sitting dead center hosting a Chinese vase filled with fresh, long-stemmed flowers. Overhead, a chandelier dripped crystals of various size, their prisms shooting in all directions. To the right, a curving staircase, carpeted in red, swept to the second floor. And from everywhere, it seemed, light spilled over and through, shining upon an opulence I’d never known.

A quick catch of my breath and Westley’s hand went to my elbow and squeezed. “Easy,” he whispered.

The uniformed maid, who I guessed to be in her thirties, clasped the wrist of one hand with the other. “Miss Justine said take y’all on to the back.”

“Thank you,” Westley said for the both of us, which was good because, had I attempted to speak, I believe only a squeak would have come out.

We followed the sound of nylons swishing in the cavernous room. I looked up at Westley, who squeezed my elbow again. If he meant this to comfort me, it wasn’t working. “Westley,” I mouthed, more a plea to “let’s turn around and just go home” than anything.

“There you are,” a low, raspy voice said from the back where a sunroom stretched across the length of the house.

“Right on time, Miss Justine,” the maid said as she stepped to one side, approval thick on her tongue. “Jus’ like you like it.”

I felt my mouth go slack at the sight of the woman who owned such grandeur. I had to remind myself that she was DiAnn’s grandmother. And that DiAnn had come from … this. Played inside the papered walls and among