“Does the man also hold your schedule?”Mrs.Matthews demanded.
“No, but he isn’t allowing me to go anywhere without him until he gets over me shrieking in his living room after I saw a woman screaming for help in the woods.”
She turned to Hutch.“Good man.”
“Thanks,” Hutch said to his bowl and shoved more spaghetti in.
“Will you bring her to me tomorrow at two?”Mrs.Matthews requested.
Hutch sat back, swallowed, and said, “Sure.”
She put her hand to the side of her mouth, leaned toward me, and then did not lower her voice at all when she asked, “This clean eating thing.Is he a liberal?”
I put my hand the same way, leaned to her and answered, “I don’t know.We haven’t talked politics.But I am.”
She sat back in shock.“I’m breaking bread with a liberal?”
“No, you’re eating the food she cooked,” Hutch said, all growly.
“Calm down, son,” she retorted.“It’s only on those phone app thingies where strangers seem fascinated by other strangers’ lives and opinions where people don’t get along.I was just surprised.Mabel doesn’t live like a liberal.”
“How do liberals live?”I asked curiously.
“I have no earthly clue,” she replied immediately.“You’re the only liberal of my acquaintance.”
With that, there was no hope for it.
I burst out laughing.
However, since she’d broken the seal…
“Mrs.Matthews,” I began.“Fur?Really?”
“I know, dear,” she said.“But those coats were my mother’s.And those animals gave their lives.I don’t have the heart not to put them to use.”
Oh.
Well then.
I smiled at her.
She didn’t smile back, but I could swear there was a twinkle in her eyes.
And then we all ate spaghetti.
Something to know.
Goons liked puppies.
I learned this by watching Mark sit on the floor in the romper room and letting all of Hutch’s babies crawl all over him.
But Mrs.Matthews pointed.
“I’ll take that one,” she announced like the puppies were donuts in a case.
They all looked a lot alike.All black.At this juncture, it was the color of their collars you had to use to tell them apart.
“That’s Nike and you picked well, Mrs.Matthews,” Hutch told her.“She’s one of two not already claimed.”
