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“Only because you won’t let me guilt trip your parents into it.”
“Don’t start,” Brenda warned. Her parents had refused to pay for anything related to Brenda becoming a teacher. They considered that profession beneath someone whose stepfather was in the Social Register, or at least her mother did. Her stepfather left that sort of policing to Mom. Her usual method was to use money as a way to corral people where she wanted them to go. Thank God for student loans, and for Granny, who’d told her about the job in Lake Bittersweet, and invited Brenda to live with her to save money.
Then moved herself into the senior home. Cecilia McMurray was a force of nature.
“Oh, I don’t want to pick a fight with you,” Granny said. “Especially now.”
“Why especially now?”
“You finally met someone! I’m thrilled for you, darling girl.”
“Met someone? You mean Galen?” Brenda laughed. “If you call apologizing for my dog mangling his fish and spilling gross water all over his floor meeting someone, I guess I did.”
“Dogs know best, honey.”
“Oh, now you’re saying my ditzy Maltese did it on purpose? It was all a plot to catch Galen’s attention?” Brenda shook her head in bemusement. “You watch too many romcoms, it’s not healthy. Drink your tea. I have to go soon.”
“Where do you have to go? It’s the weekend.”
“I have work to do.”
“Chapter ten?”
“Chapter ten.” Only Granny knew about her secret hobby of writing books that would never be published.
“You’re such a disappointment,” grumbled her grandmother, but in that way that meant she loved and adored Brenda. It was entirely mutual. “You should be doing exciting things with attractive men and telling me all about it. Instead it’s chapter ten.”
“My heroine’s about to get kidnapped,” Brenda offered.
“I guess that’ll have to do.” Then she added, “I just heard from your mother this morning. She’s coming for a visit and wanted to run some dates by me.”
Brenda groaned as she dumped her tea bag in the waste basket. “Why did you wait until the very end to drop that bombshell?” Visits from her mother were so disruptive, it sometimes took her weeks to recover.
“Because it’s a much less entertaining topic than Galen.” A wicked grin spread across her grandmother’s face. “Now, if you were to throw a dinner party for Laney, I have an idea for the guest list.”
It took a moment, but then Brenda saw where she was going with that, and burst out laughing. “Oh my God, can you imagine? What would Mom say about that beard?”
“There’s only one real way to know.” Was that an actual cackle? How could her rebellious grandmother have given birth to her buttoned-up mother? And where did Brenda fit in?
“I’m not going to subject a poor innocent mountain guide to Mom’s white-glove inspection routine. You’re bad, Granny.”
“Bad to the bone,” she agreed cheerfully. “Now go say ‘hi’ to Rosalind. She’s been asking about you.”
After a quick kiss goodbye, Brenda hurried down the hall to Rosalind Stanley’s room. Rosalind had to be over ninety, but she refused to tell anyone exactly how old she was. Lately, she’d become more quiet and inclined to nap a lot. When Brenda poked her head into her room, she saw that Rosalind was indeed asleep, a lacy Afghan spread across her knees, her mouth ajar, Judge Judy playing on her TV.
Brenda waited a moment, in case the presence of another person jarred her awake. She admired the framed landscapes mounted on the walls, lush watercolors of forests and seascapes. Rosalind had been an artist until dementia had set in. When Rosalind kept quietly snoring, she tiptoed away, then headed outside to her car. As much as she enjoyed time with her grandmother and the other seniors she’d gotten to know, she was always happy to step back into the sunlight.
Behind the wheel of her Volvo, she checked off the day’s tasks. Shopping, done. Dog-walk, done. Granny-visit, done. Eccentric local character encounter, done.
Crap, that meant procrastination time was over. Her work-in-progress was tired of waiting for her.
“I’m coming,” she muttered to her half-finished book, which wasn’t even here, but lurking back at home in her computer. “Get off my back.”
Then she remembered that it was a gory crime thriller, and decided she’d better not piss it off.
“Please.”
three
