“I’m sorry. Guys get bullied when they’re undersized, but girls are right the opposite. None of it makes a bit of sense to me.” His phone pinged, and he fished it out of the pocket of his dress slacks. He read the text, typed in a return note, and then pushed his cart around hers. “Supper is going to be cold if I don’t hurry. Thanks again for everything. And hold those wings and halos in reserve until you get to know the girls better.”

Oh, I would love to get to know them better, and you, too, Graham, she thought as she watched him disappear around the corner. They are a mirror of myself at that age.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Mitzi noticed Paula’s note on the table as she passed by it that morning. She flipped on the light and read that Paula would be a few minutes late to work. “Probably Gladys again,” she muttered as she headed to the refrigerator.

At seven in the morning sunrays were usually streaming through the window, but not that day. A loud clap of thunder followed a flash of lightning, and then hard rain sounded like bullets hitting the metal roof. The light above the table flickered and then went out.

“Well, there goes the electricity,” Mitzi groaned. “I guess I’ll pick up pastries for breakfast. Paula was the smart one, leaving before all this hit.”

She made her way to her bedroom in the semidarkness, got dressed, and picked up an umbrella on the way outside. She’d barely made it off the porch when a solid gust of wind blew it out of her hands. She watched it flip a couple of times before it hung up in the lower limbs of the huge pecan tree at the corner of her house. There was no way to run between the raindrops as she dashed to the van, so she was soaked when she slid into the seat.

“Thank God I’ve got extra clothes at the shop,” she muttered as she started the engine and headed to town.

She used the drive-through window to order a dozen assorted doughnuts, but even with the small awning over the window, the sack was water-splotched by the time she pulled it into the vehicle. She hadn’t expected to see Paula’s car in the parking lot when she parked behind the house, but Jody’s old truck wasn’t there, either. Grabbing up her purse in one hand and the brown bag in the other, she hurried through the rain to the porch.

“I shouldn’t have dropped my keys in here somewhere,” she scolded herself as she fished around in her purse. When she finally located them and got inside, she held her breath and flipped on the lights.

“Hallelujah!” she shouted. “We’ve got power. The whole town isn’t without electricity like usual when it storms.”