Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

swung, aiming as well as he could through the red haze that glazed his view, and connected. There was an odd crunching sound and John Lee was flung face down into the leaf litter and lay still.
    Phoebe screamed, but did not run away as any sensible girl would have. She tried to reach John Lee’s prone form, but Harley seized her by the shoulders, and she turned toward him. He was vaguely aware that she was making a high-pitched sound, part fear and part outrage. She was fighting him. She attempted to jerk out of his grasp. Harley wasn’t steady enough to keep his feet, and they went down together. Harley fell on the girl like a sack of potatoes, and her breath whooshed out past his ear.
    Harley thought that Phoebe was struggling and crying under him. He thought that he saw John Lee sit up, then brace himself unsteadily with his hand on the ground. The boy said something that Harley didn’t understand. He turned his head enough to look at his son, who was coming at him. John Lee reached into the bib pocket of his overalls.

Chapter Two
    Alafair Tucker was standing on the porch, clutching a dishtowel, watching the two young people come up the tree-lined drive toward the house, and she shaded her eyes with her free hand in order to see them better against the pale gray afternoon sky. They were walking slowly, perfectly decorous, at least a yard apart, but Alafair was not fooled. Phoebe’s face may have been serene as an angel’s, but it was also beet red. The white house sat on a gentle rise facing the long drive that ran the quarter-mile from the road to the barn and stables so it was easy for Alafair to observe the couple for a considerable time before they reached her.
    Alafair had not seen John Lee Day much since he had gotten so well grown, but there was no mistaking who he was. He still had the same stunning, big-eyed face that he had had when he was a ten-year-old and used to hang around the farm with all the other kids in the vicinity. He looked like a man, now, Alafair thought with a pang. A young man, to be sure, downy-cheeked still, but those cheeks were surely more gaunt than when she had last seen him. He looked to be a little less than middle height, but that still made him taller than Alafair’s little Phoebe.
    “Well, look what Phoebe has drug in,” said the girl in the porch swing to Alafair’s left. “It’s John Lee Day as I live and breathe.”
    “Don’t you have something to do, Alice?” Alafair asked, without taking her eyes off the advancing couple.
    “Sure I do, Mama,” Alice answered in that light, sassy way of hers. “But this here is much more interesting.”
    Alafair had long ago learned to school her pleasant features to look all business, but her mouth often betrayed her with unbidden smiles, as it did now as she looked over at Alice. Alice and Phoebe were twins, both seventeen and beautiful, but so unlike that it was hard to believe that they were even sisters. Alice was tall and incorrigible, blond as wheat and blue-eyed as the sky. Phoebe was like the little bird she was named for, small and neat, with an abundance of waving dark russet hair and fine, deep-set hazel eyes that could be either green or gold depending on the light and her mood. She was brave, Phoebe was, and could stand up for herself when she had to, and with Alice for a twin, she often had to. But left to her own devices, Phoebe was by far the sweetest of all of Alafair’s children, and a real dreamer. “I can’t remember the last time I saw John Lee,” Alafair observed to Alice. “He used to be around a lot to play with you kids when he was a youngster.”
    Alice shrugged. “Ever since he’s gotten old enough to walk behind a plow his daddy’s kept him as a slave, I think. You know how we’ve got to walk by their place on the way to town? Seems like he was always there by the road, at the gate in front of their farm, watching us go by when we went to school.”
    “Didn’t he go with you?”
    “He left school when he was about thirteen, if I remember right. He still shows up at that gate, though. Especially when Phoebe walks by. I think he’s sweet on her.”
    Alafair looked back out at the advancing pair and rubbed her arms, wishing that she had thought to throw on a shawl before she stepped outside. Her breath clouded the air as she sighed. “Now, why haven’t I heard about this?” she wondered aloud.
    “Why, you know how Phoebe is, Ma.”
    “I know you’d never let her hear the end of