“If you wash your face and take an antibiotic,” I say with a smile.
She laughs a fake laugh and shoots me a fuck-you smile.
“You are so kind, Ron,” Trudy says. “Where do you go to church?”
“Right here,” Ron says.
Trudy looks out, scanning the yard and the mountains.
“I don’t see a church,” she says.
“Would you care for a cocktail, Trudy?” Ron asks, not answering her question. “I think you could use one.”
“Oh, she doesn’t drink,” I say. “Do you, Trudy? Tell him. Drinking is evil.”
“Oh, I do now,” she says. “Even Jesus drank wine.”
I lift a brow at her.
Ron heads to the kitchen, Trudy following like the baby quail that run through our yard.
“Could you be a dear and retrieve our luggage, Ava?” Trudy calls in a now happy tone, wiping her brow with a Kleenex she pulled from the sleeve of her hideous sweater. “The Uber driver just dumped it out in your driveway.”
“How did you find me anyway?” I ask, teeth clenched.
“It’s called Google, Grandpa,” Ava says.
“Call me Grandpa again and I will kill you in your sleep,” I say. “I am not joking.”
Ava quickly heads toward the door.
HowdidTrudy find me, though?
Has Ron secretly been conversing with her? Did he confiscate my cell and give her our address after listening to her sobbing voicemails? And why is she really here? My sister is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swaddled in a blue-tinted old lady perm, polyester sweater and a shade of eye shadow not found on a color wheel.
But most importantly, how the hell do I get rid of them? They’re the last people I want to be around before I die. Or they kill me like Ralph.
“Wanna help me with the luggage?” Ava asks me at the door.
I glance at her. “Do I look like the help?”
“You look like youneedhelp.”
Ava glares at me. I roll my eyes at her.
I finally realize that I, too, am but a teenage girl.
Ava flips her hair, and I watch my mini-me walk out the front door.
Ron
“You must feel like you are back home in Michigan with this beef stroganoff, scalloped potatoes and creamed peas and onions,” I say to Trudy, who has seemingly not lost her appetite even after her fight with Teddy.
“Our mother didn’t cook,” Teddy says. “Did she, dear sister?”
Teddy is on his second Manhattan. It’s 11:00 a.m.
Trudy nervously shoves heaping forkfuls of food into her mouth.
