Then she looks back at Margie with a knowing smile. “No better place than Snaggletooth Creek to work on yourself.”
“It’s been good so far.”
“With friends like my boys? I’m sure it has.”
Mrs. Sullivan doesn’t meanfriends, and she doesn’t meanallof her boys.
Not with the look she slides between Lucky and Margie again.
I glance at Margie.
Now that I know her a little better, it’s easier to tell when she’s been thrown for a loop.
This—Mrs. Sullivan implying Margie’s here for a hookup—is loop territory.
While her face is mostly placid, her right eye has pinched the barest amount behind her glasses, and her lips have gone flat.
I bump her from the side with my hip. “Leave some apple for me to make magic, Skillet. Don’t take it all off with the peel.”
Her face smooths out, and she gives me a playful smile. “Have you looked at how much apple you’re taking off withyourpeel?”
I grab one of hers and one of mine and lift them to the light to inspect them. “You’re worse. Look. There’s at least three extra millimeters of apple width on your peel.”
“You can seethree millimeterswith your eyeballs?”
Lucky and Decker quit arguing about the mayo measurement for the potato salad and look at us.
“You can’t?” I reply to Margie. “Time to get your prescription checked.”
“Quit flirting with my—friend,” Lucky says.
His mom turns a startled look at him, then peers closer at Margie, who deftly gathers up a load of peels, head down like it was when she was facing Jonas Rutherford the other day. She turns away and dumps them in Lucky’s compost bin.
“There.Nowwe can’t argue about who left more apple on their peel,” she says.
“Still you,” I mutter.
“Just for that, you’re cutting them yourself.”
“Have to. They need to be uniform. You’d probably do some chunks and some slices, and it’d be ruined.”
She’s pursing her lips together, but you can still tell she’s smiling. “I’m going to see if Jack needs anything. He was so nice too, Mrs. Sullivan. He changed the timing belt on my van when it broke after I got here.”
“Just Jack?” I tease.
She grins at me. “Only people who don’t give me shit about how I peel apples get credit for fixing my car.”
Lucky’s glaring at me.
Decker’s not too happy either, but in Decker’s case, it’s definitely not thedon’t hit on my sisterproblem that Lucky’s having.
Decker, I’m nearly certain, is glad that no one’s implying Margie should date Lucky anymore. And also pissed at me because he can’t tell if I’m playing a part or really falling for the sister I’m supposed to be investigating.
“Lucky, do you—” his mom starts as the door closes behind Margie, but he interrupts her.
“Mom, tell Decker that Grandma’s potato salad recipe is wrong with how it’s written, and we need to double the mayo and add dill.”
She shoots one more look at me, but this one holds an exasperated smile. “Do you have family members who intentionally wrote down recipes wrong so that no one else could make them correctly, Rhys?”
