“That’s good to know. I was worried there for a minute.”
Laney smiles before taking the rag. She washes it out before putting it back up to my nose. I can feel it clotting, so it’s not gushing like before.
I reach up to take the rag from Laney, and our fingers touch for a few seconds. It’s like a sizzle of electricity from her to me.
Glancing around the room, I grin at the assortment of farm animal paraphernalia. “It looks like they’ve embraced the farm life here.”
“Wholeheartedly. Sorry about your nose,” she says, giving me a sincere look.
“It’s fine. It’s good to know you punch people when you get surprised.”
We both laugh at that. She grabs another cloth and gets it wet. “Let me get some of this blood off.” She wipes near my chin and the hand I’m not holding the other cloth with.
“How did you learn to hit?” I say, curious again.
“There was a community class when I was a teenager. My grandma was worried about me getting kidnapped because of all the times she’s heard aboutpeople on the news. So I learned some self-defense moves.”
She jumps back and forth on the balls of her feet with her fists raised as if ready to box.
“That’s a fun surprise.”
There’s movement behind the door close to us, and it opens with two white-haired people walking in. It sounds like they’re bickering.
“You didn’t have to shut the trunk. We have a lot more groceries to bring?—”
The woman startles just like Laney, although she doesn’t throw a fist in my face, for which I’m grateful.
“What’s going on?” the older man says in a clipped tone. “Why aren’t you walking in—oh, Laney girl. We didn’t expect you today.”
“It’s Grammie’s birthday. Of course I was going to come.”
Grandma looks at me and says, “Who’s this?”
Laney laughs and says, “This is my neighbor, Burton. He’s helping the crew outside.”
The older woman looks at me in confusion. “Crew outside?” She sets her purse down on the counter and shuffles over to the window. “What are all those people doing out there?”
Laney shrugs.
I say, “We were told to come do some cleanup here for a service project.”
“What happened to you, kid?” the grandpa asks, poking me with his cane.
I wipe below my nose. “Well, I went to sneak up on Laney because I saw her here and?—”
“She hit you,” Grandpa says with a wide grin on his face. “You were right, Marianne. Those defense classes paid off.”
“He’s not a criminal, Grandpa,” Laney says.
“Well, I guess that’s a good thing if he’s working at our house,” Grandpa says. “We may not look like we have valuables here, but we do. Stashed away, of course.”
“In a place even he can’t find,” Laney says, laughing.
Her grandpa looks at her with a frown before nodding his head. “That’s probably true.”
“Who got all these people to come out here, anyway?” Grandma asks.
The three of them stare at one another, and it makes me wonder what it must have been like growing up here. Being raised by quirky grandparents and living a life so different from mine.
