“You’re the one who brought us here,” I said. “And you’re the one who can turn it around. I don’t need you to be the perfect grandmother or the perfect guest in my home. I just need you to be decent. Grateful. And to never threaten my children again.”
We stared each other down like two gunfighters in an old western.
At last she nodded, which was the closest I’d get to an agreement, a truce.
I felt a strange satisfaction, having stood up to my mother for once.
“Like I said,” I told her, “I’ll talk to Olivia about the stone and make sure she doesn’t borrow it again. I don’t want you to say a word to her about it. Do you understand? Not a word.”
My mother nodded. “I’ll be quiet as a mouse,” she said. “Or should I say… a rat?” She smiled mischievously.
She must have heard us upstairs. Or heard Izzy and Mark leaving the house with the creature. She giggled like the rat was part of some practical joke she’d played.
The uneasy feeling in my chest grew.
AFTER A CUPof my extra-special candy cane hot cocoa and a bowl of chocolate chip oatmeal, Olivia seemed back to her normal self. I told her that her grandmother was too tired for a morning visit, so she sat at the breakfast bar chattering away until it was time to get dressed for school. Mark went to work and the girls headed off on the bus. At eight thirty, there was a knock on the door. Then it opened, and Penny called out, “Hello?”
I’d forgotten I’d invited her for coffee with my mother. I cringed a little, hoping my mother would behave. But then again, maybe it was betterif she didn’t, if Penny got to see the not-so-nice version of her. It seemed my mother had everyone else fooled. And surely my sensitive, perceptive best friend would be able to see the real her.
“Come on in,” I called from the kitchen. “I was putting more coffee on for us.”
Penny came in, taking off her coat and boots and joining me in the kitchen, carrying a dish. “Louise made us a blueberry sour cream coffee cake,” she said, smiling proudly. She set down the cake and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She was dressed in her therapist clothes: wool tights and a long blue skirt, a purple shirt with one of her chunky hand-knit sweaters over it. Her hair was braided and held back by a leather barrette with a polished stick running through it.
“Wonderful! Hey, you should have brought her along.”
Penny picked off some of the crumbled topping from the coffee cake and had a nibble. “She was caught up in stuff at home. There’s some sort of drama with one of the chickens getting broody and she wants to put a stop to it before any of our other girls get the same idea. She’s got some tricks she’s trying—one of them involves sticking a bag of frozen peas under the poor hen to get her off her eggs.” She shook her head in acan you even believe itway.
I laughed. “Sounds like Louise has got her hands full.”
“I’ll say! Also, we didn’t want to overwhelm your mom. Louise can drop by another time to meet her. It’ll give her an excuse to bake another coffee cake.”
“Sounds perfect.” The coffee was perking and I was getting down cups.
“Anything I can do to help?” Penny asked.
“Sure. You can slice that and put it on plates for us.”
Penny knew my kitchen just as well as her own and grabbed the plates, a knife, and forks.
“How’s your morning going?” she asked as she sliced the cake.
I laughed. “Well, it began with my mother screaming for me at four thirty—somehow she’d gotten out of bed and opened the window.”
“Well, that’s definitely not a great start to the day,” Penny said, putting the first generously sized piece of coffee cake onto a plate.
I nodded in agreement. “And then Olivia was hysterical because she woke up around five and—you aren’t going to believe this—there was aratin her room.”
“A rat?” Penny set down the knife and looked at me, eyebrows raised. “An actual rat? Not a mouse?”
“Oh no. This was definitely not a mouse. This was a legitimate, full-sized rat. And it didn’t help that poor Olivia keeps having nightmares about the Rat King fromThe Nutcracker. Then an actual rat shows up in her room—so of course, now she thinks itwasthe Rat King.”
“Poor thing,” Penny said. “We do get rats in the barn sometimes. We have to keep all the grain and food for the sheep and chickens in metal trash cans. One year, they were so bad we put out poison. We haven’t had to for a while, though. I think having so many cats helps keep them away.”
“Well, Mark killed ours with a cast-iron Santa.”
“No way!” Penny laughed. “Mark?YourMark? Emily Dickinson scholar, lover of all things Christmas? The guy who catches mice, gives them cute little names, and then lets them go?”
“None other.”
