Excerpt: As Marry As the Day is Long

It had been, before its untimely death, a small, simple garden snake. Non-poisonous, innocuous, the least likely creature in the garden to ever do any person in the house harm. It was a rubbery, grassy green, and it had only caught anyone’s attention because its coloring stood out starkly against the freshly tilled ground in front of Maggie’s fence. If it had picked a different day to come out of hiding, or had decided to sneak a peek at the festivities a few hours earlier in the day, it would have survived. The only sin the snake had ever committed, its only crime at all, had been leaving its cool, dark hidey hole while Addie Leonard was wielding a shovel.

She hadn’t set out to commit murder, no matter what thoughts she’d been having about Be as she stormed out of the hardware store. All she had been doing before the gruesome act occurred was digging holes along the (still drying) fence to plant the mums that her aunt had decided the yard desperately needed. In all honesty, Maggie’d likely bought the mums three days earlier and had likely intended to put them in before the reception some time. She’d likely also thought it was better to give her niece a shovel and some flowers, in her current mood, instead of knives and other sharp objects. Maggie was from the generation that said strong emotions were best worked out through physical labor, because then there was little chance of those same emotions turning around and getting you into trouble. Teenaged tantrums had usually been sweated out during furious weed-pulling sessions or tree leaf rakings. The mums were, likely, meant to serve the same purpose.

And had failed. Addie was still fuming just as hotly by the fourth potted plant as she’d been before she’d put the fresh coat of paint on the fence. The shovel had been digging into the ground with such unmistakable fury that it was only a matter of time before something – be it an earthworm, a lady bug, or the poor unfortunately snake – met their sticky end at its hands.

“Oooh! If I didn’t have such fond memories of his mother, I’d have such a few things to say about that man that would not be complimentary to her,” Addie said as she lifted the spade, grimacing at the blood smeared across the sharpest edge of it. The snake was in two pieces now, and both were still twitching.

“You really want to bury that before Hope gets home,” Maggie said, coming over with a tray in hand. Two glasses of lemonade, heavy on the ice, were perched in the middle of it.

Addie reached for a glass and didn’t waste a second tipping it back for a long, throat-filling gulp. “Still? She’s thirty-two. Does she pull over and cry if she sees a dead squirrel in the middle of the street?”

“If she didn’t like the taste of an occasional cheeseburger, that girl would be a vegetarian by now.” Maggie looked down at the unfortunate victim. “Poor thing. Did he really deserve to pay for Ben havin’ a little chuckle at your expense?”

Addie frowned, and it wasn’t because the lemonade was too sour for her taste. “He was being an A-1 jackass.”

“What, the snake?”

“No! Benedict Arnold Thompson.” She set the glass down with a thump on the tray and jabbed the shovel into the dirt again.