Dixie smiled over the rim of her cup at Em. “Still your person?” she mouthed.
Em nodded and smiled back at Dixie. “Always,” she returned. After a sleepless night of contemplation, she’d decided Jax was right. Dixie loved her and the boys, and she felt responsible for the pain they were suffering. She’d done what she did best. Put people in their place.
It wasn’t Dixie’s fault Em was too much of a coward to do it for herself.
Em turned her back on the flare of Clora’s nostrils and her sour eyes. Clora didn’t like Dixie, but Em was never sure if it was that she didn’t like Dixie, or if it had more to do with Dixie’s mother, who’d once ruled Plum Orchard like a queen and had dubbed Clora unworthy as one of the Magnolias’ subjects.
Like mother like daughter.
Dixie flung an arm around Em’s shoulders and aimed her mischievous smile at Clora. “So what are we talking about, ladies?”
Clora’s lips thinned again. “Emmaline’s disreputable behavior and how it affects her and the boys.”
Dixie widened her eyes to the point of exaggeration. “You? Are you sure we’re talkin’ Emmaline Amos here? The Em I know, my best friend Em, would never behave badly. Surely you’re mistaken, Clora? My Em is amazing and smart and has impeccable manners. So many good things about her, I’ve lost count.”
Em bit back a snort, zipping up Clifton’s lunch box and wincing while she waited for Clora to react.
“Your best friend was in a car with a man.”
Dixie gasped, propping a hand on her hip. “Oh, that’s dreadful. Deplorable. I mean, with all the murderers running loose these days, how could she?”
Clora bristled, narrowing her gaze in Dixie’s direction, her finger raised. “You’d do well to watch your tone, Dixie Davis. You’re just not happy unless your smart tongue is waggin’ and causin’ nothin’ but trouble. I heard all about your screamin’ fit in the diner last night. Haven’t you tainted Emmaline’s name enough by association?”
Confrontation. That’s where this was heading. Divert, avoid, redirect.
Em plunked the boys’ backpacks on the counter in front of her mother, giving Dixie the warning sign with her desperate eyes. “Mama, Dixie didn’t taint me. I tainted me. Me. Nobody else. By choosin’ to run a place that promotes fornicatin’ with your words and marryin’ a man who likes to wear lipstick. Now, I have to get to work. Are you sure you’ll be all right droppin’ the boys at school?”
Clora yanked the kitchen towel from her shoulder and slapped it on the counter with a snap. “We’ll be fine.”
Disaster averted. “Thank you, Mama. Boys!” she bellowed. “Time for school. Grandma Clora’s waitin’.”
Dixie turned her back on Clora, opening her arms to Clifton and Gareth, who ran into them willingly, like anyone who wasn’t female did. She plopped kisses on their dark heads, and the picture of the three of them together in a huddle struck Em as ironic that her best friend showed more affection to them than their own grandmother.
So many things were wrong with that picture. When her children received more outward love from her friends than they did from their own flesh and blood, it might be time to reevaluate.
Clora gathered the keys, the jingle of them rousing Dora from her dog bed on the far side of the kitchen. “I’ll warm the car,” she said, gathering her coat, frowning again at Dora’s bulk, filling up the kitchen, leaving clumps of hair all over the place.
Dora nudged Em’s hip with her big, wet nose. She’d never been allowed to have a pet when she was a child. Dora had been an act of passive-aggressive payback to her mother, a silent eff you.
She recognized it for what it was now, though, over the past three years, she’d no sooner part with Dora than she would one of her children. The act of adopting her was a ridiculous way to show her mother she was going to give her children all the things she’d lacked as a child.
The boys had been so taken with her, sticking their fingers in her cage, giggling and cooing at her, it made Em smile wide. She loved to see them happy.
She’d adopted her at an adoption fair right in front of Clora while the boys looked on—defiantly holding up the squirming brown-and-white puppy like some trophy, as if to say, “Look at me not taking your advice. Hah!”
Clora had griped that Dora would only add to her workload, already pushed to its limits with a full-time job and a husband who wasn’t always present, even when he was in the same room. The more Clora protested her decision, the more Em was determined to pay the adoption fee.
Dora whined. She didn’t like Clora, hid from her every chance she got. Half St. Bernard and half something no vet from here to Johnsonville could identify, her big body harbored a total chicken.