To be totally honest, Miss Flora Mae leaves her house so rarely that I forgot what kind of car she even had. Evenher groceries are delivered to her. Not with some fancy app or anything, like Aunt Cheryl has in Phoenix, but Green’s Grocers does home delivery for senior citizens and people who have trouble leaving their house. Mom says it’s that kind of watch-out-for-your-neighbor attitude that she likes about Valentine.
She shakes her head and removes her sunglasses. I notice for the first time how long and smooth her white hair is, parted at the center of her head. “My baby sister, Gloria, has fallen ill.” She turns to me. “No matter how old we get she’ll always be the baby, so I’m gonna head off to take care of her for the next few weeks.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister” is all I manage to blurt out. This lady is one giant mystery, but for some reason the thing that shocks me most is that she has any family at all.
She shrugs, tossing an old toolbox into her back seat and then throwing a quilt in after that. The car is full of odds and ends—definitely not the kind of stuff I’d take with me on a road trip to see family. Though the last time we visited Aunt Cheryl, I somehow thought I needed to bring the encyclopedia set Dad got me for Christmas, Mom’s old cell phone that she’d passed down to me (not connected, for the record), and three whoopee cushions. Just in case. It was the first time Mom let me pack myself for a trip. (I have to be totally honest and admit that I forgot to pack any underwear. I knew I was forgetting something.)
“Well,” she says, “we don’t like each other much, but we are cursed to love each other.”
I almost gasp. I can’t believe she’d have the guts to say something like that out loud—especially to me. Adults are never that honest with kids—but maybe that’s what happens when you get old. I’ve got to say, though, something about the way Miss Flora Mae says things really makes stuff click for me sometimes. Because the way she feels about her sister is pretty much how I’m feeling about my parents right about now: 150 percent cursed.
“So, listen here, Patricia. Mr. Joe Salazar, the newspaper editor, leaves the letters for the advice column in my mailbox three times a week. I try to keep him to a schedule, but I’ve had no luck taming that man. I’m not real keen on people knowing I’m leaving town, so you keep this between me, you, and your cat, ya hear? Not even your nosy friend.”
“Oscar isn’t—” Okay, well maybe he is a little bit nosy. “Won’t the whole neighborhood see you driving out of town anyway?”
She tosses one single rain boot onto the pile in her back seat. I can’t help but wonder where the heck the other one is. “Not if I leave under the cover of darkness, they won’t.”
I wonder how she got to be this weird, or if she just always was and her husband’s death made things worse.“Okay, but what do you need from me?”
“Simple. Gather up my letters and send them to me at my sister’s house.” She stuffs a crumpled-up piece of scratch paper into the palm of my hand. “Share this address with no one.”
“Um... okay?”
“Then you check my mail every day, and when I send the letters back with my responses, I just want you to package ’em up all nice in the big envelopes I’ve left for you in my oven.”
“In your oven?” I can’t believe I’m hearing right.
“I hate repeating myself, Patricia. It’s a true waste of both our time. Leave the answered letters in the mailbox. Joe will come by and get them, and no one will be the wiser. When I get back, as long as you’ve done what I’ve asked you, I’ll compensate you for your time.”
“Compensate me for my time?”
“Again, here we go with the repeating. I. Will. Pay. You. Patricia,” she says nice and slow. I must still look pretty confused, because she adds, “With money! Ya know? The green stuff. What did you think I meant?”
I shrug. Sometimes when old people talk about money, they don’t get that things aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Like, I can’t do anything with a dime! Mr. Russo, the gas station clerk at Phillip’s Fill ’Em Up and Joseph“Digging for Gold” Russo’s dad, always lets me take a piece of change out of the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny jar at his register like it’s some kind of big deal. And I appreciate the thought, but what can I even buy with a penny? Dad says the penny is a drain on the economy and that we should just stop using them. So when Miss Flora Mae says she’s going to pay me, I’m not expecting a whole lot of anything.
Heck, when I fed Miss Dillon’s cat for a week when she went on a cruise, she told me she’d pay me too. She just didn’t say it would be in seashells she’d found on the beach and painted herself. When one of them started stinking up my room, Dad found a dead snail inside. Mom said it was a good lesson in doing nice things without expecting anything in return. I thought it was a good lesson in why you should check your seashells for living creatures before taking them home.
“Miss Flora Mae?” I ask.
“Yes?”
“Why not just mail them back and forth directly from the newspaper?”
She drapes one arm over her car door.
“Patricia, I am a very specific person who wants things done a very specific way, and to be perfectly honest, I owe you no explanation. Now, are you going to help me out or not?”
I gulp. “Okay.”
She narrows her eyes. “And this will stay between you and me?”
“Well, and Cheese.”
“Who?”
“My cat. Cheese. You did say I could tell my cat.”
“Right, right. You, me, and Cheese.” She holds her hand out for me to shake. “What an absurd name for a cat.”
