“When did they tell you that?”
“When they DM’ed me an obituary for my mustache.”
She lifts her arm and peers at me. “No.”
I locate the ice pack, shut the freezer, and cross back to Goldie on the floor. “They think you love cookies so they keep giving you cookies.”
“That isnotwhat’s going on here.”
“Then what is?”
“You show me the obituary, I’ll tell you my cookie confession.”
“Not sure a cookie confession is worth what’s in this obituary. Where’s your tape and your Sharpie?”
She lifts her hips, settles onto the ice pack, and almost immediately sighs in relief.
My own anxiety ratchets down.
She’ll be okay.
“Bedroom,” she says. “I’ll give you twenty dollars to read me that obituary.”
That’s hilarious. “Don’t need your twenty bucks.” I stride intoher bedroom, locate the tape and a thick Sharpie, and accidentally spot another ice pack on her bed. It’s warm. She must’ve used it earlier and forgotten to refreeze it.
“I’ll tell you where you can go to get real Cadbury chocolate,” she calls.
I abruptly halt on my path back to the kitchen to refreeze this ice pack for her. “RealCadbury chocolate? The kind they won’t import here? And the candy bar flavors you couldn’t get even if they did?”
“The real stuff. Pick your candy bar variety, and it can happen.”
Shit.
I’m drooling. “I don’t eat that crap anymore.”
“Season only lasts so long.”
“I don’t do chocolate after the season. I go to Bruges and get Liège waffles and eat them until I puke instead.”
She laughs, and Sweet Pea crawls up onto her belly, making her laugh more.
“Well worth it,” I add.
Also, I do the chocolate bingeafterI do the waffle binge.
Bruges is also a good place to start for that, though it won’t be nearly as close this year as it has been at the end of every other rugby season.
“You should take a few weekends to visit Europe while you’re in London,” I tell her, ignoring that fucking bumping in my chest again that gets worse as Sweet Pea turns in a circle on Goldie’s stomach, then plops down like Goldie’s her bed. “Can’t beat it for food and history. I can tell you the best places. But only if you tell me why you have thirty-eight bags of half-eaten cookies in your freezer.”
“Nine. Not thirty-eight.Nine. And I’d rather have the mustache obituary.”
“Where do you get the real Cadbury bars?”
“Evelyn’s neighbor has a grandkid currently at university inIreland who ships cartons of them home a couple times a month. She’ll sell them to you at a twenty percent mark-up unless you agree to receive one of the cartons, in which case she’ll charge you regular price.”
My father would choke on his own tongue at the idea of me getting involved with a senior citizen chocolate-smuggling ring. “No freebies for the inconvenience?”
“She has enough people accepting deliveries that she can take her pick in who she works with. The discount is all you get.”
