I shook my head. “I don’t know. A goose just walked over my grave, I guess.” She gave me a questioning look but I couldn’t answer. Something had shifted, and though I had no idea what it was, I had a queasy feeling we were going to find out.
WHEN WE TROMPED into the house, Miranda was sitting at the table, eating cookies and drinking milk, her nose stuck in a book as usual. Her gaze flickered our way. Without missing a beat, she said, “Mom, you’re tracking again.”
I glanced down at my sneakers. Encrusted with soft dirt from the flower beds, they were leaving a trail of grimy footprints across my clean kitchen tile. I sighed, stopping to untie them. Murray followed suit.
“Can’t somebody come up with a floor that repels dirt?” I dropped them into the pantry next to the laundry basket, then snagged the sponge and a paper towel to wipe up the mess.
Randa smirked behind her book.
“Thanks a lot, kiddo.” I tossed the paper towel in the garbage. After I washed my hands and poured the apple juice, I motioned for her to scoot over to the end of the table. “You just love it when your mother trips up, don’t you?”
She grinned. “Hey, don’t blame me for trying to even the score.”
I peeked at the cover of her book.Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax.” “Any good?”
“Yeah,” she said with a satisfied smile. “It’s a lot of fun.” Ever since Miranda had returned from Space Camp, she’d been more determined than ever to become an astronaut. I still worried about her studying too much, but at least she’d traded in her standard Donna Karan-look for something more age-appropriate. In her cobalt polo shirt and khaki shorts, with her raven hair cut into a long shaggy mane, she looked her age, rather than thirteen-trying-for-twenty.
She closed her book and pushed it to the side. “Hey Mom, has the school called yet?”
“No, but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.” Earlier in the summer, she’d taken placement tests to see if she could skip a grade or two. We were waiting for the results.
Murray wrinkled her nose and playfully snatched a cookie off Randa’s plate. “These are good, who made them?” she said, biting into the crumbly golden round.
“Ida.” I refilled the plate from the cookie jar on the counter. Yum. The scent of peanut butter drifted up to tickle my nose. “She’s been trying to keep busy. That business with her nephew shook her to the core, so I’ve been encouraging the kids to spend a lot of time at her place this summer, helping out. She insists on paying them, but I think the company does her good.”
Ida Trask was a local legend, a retired schoolteacher and baby-sitter extraordinaire. Practically everybody who’d been born in Chiqetaw during the past thirty years had ended up as her student. Now she ran a baby-sitting service and I’d relied on her to watch Kip and Miranda ever since we moved into the neighborhood a couple of years ago. With her living just down the street, she was handy as well as reliable.
“Poor Mrs. Trask,” Miranda said. “I don’t blame her for being upset. Say, what are we going to do for my birthday?” Her leap in subject matter was par for the course. Randa’s self-centered nature had always managed to rear its head, though lately she’d been worse than usual. I knew she was going through the typical teen-angst phase, but the trait bothered me. Still, with her fourteenth birthday coming up in less than two weeks, I’d decided to write off the latest bout to excitement.
“What do you want to do? Do you want a party?” I wasn’t about to plan some surprise gig that she might not like. I’d already made enough mistakes in the parenting department to last me a lifetime.
She shrugged. “Maybe just dinner and movies here. I guess Dad’s going to forget again?”
For the millionth time I wanted to kill Roy. I bit my tongue, trying to figure out what to say when Murray broke in. “Say, what about a party out at my house?” she said. “I haven’t played hostess for awhile. You can bring all the friends you want.”
Randa flashed her a huge grin. Murray lived over on Sunrise Avenue, on three acres in a gorgeous, old Victorian, along with her two beautiful boa constrictors, Sid and Nancy. Her land was adjacent to Willowmoor Meadows, the biggest park in Chiqetaw.
“That’d be great,” Randa said. “I’ll invite Lori, and of course Kip and you guys and Harlow and Joe and the members of my astronomy club. Do you think Mrs. Trask and Mr. Ledbetter might want to come?”
Once again, it struck me that my daughter had very few friends her own age, but she seemed content and, in the end, that was what really mattered. “I think they’d probably like that.”
We agreed on an evening barbecue on the twenty-second, which was still a couple weeks away, and then Randa grabbed her book and took off for the front porch, where she could read in peace.
After she left, I relaxed. “Thanks Mur, I’ve been at my wit’s end trying to think up something she might enjoy. Randa never gives me any clue as to what she wants when it comes to stuff like this.”
As we were headed into the living room, the screen door squeaked and Randa poked her head around the living room wall. “Mom, Harlow’s here.”
Harlow cautiously navigated the bench in the foyer, stopping to admire the bouquet blossoming out in the weathered marble urn that sat on the table next to the bench.
“Gorgeous roses,” she said. “Love that dusky peach color. From Joe?”
“Nope, from Horvald,” I said, grinning. Over the course of the summer, my neighbor had taken it upon himself to keep me in freshly cut flowers. I enjoyed the bouquets, and it was nice; it felt like Horvald had kind of adopted the kids and me.
Harlow waddled into the living room. Pregnant or not, she was still the most gorgeous woman I’d ever known. Her crimped golden hair was caught by a velvet ribbon, and streamed down her back. Standing five-foot eleven, she’d been a supermodel until her early twenties. Pregnancy had eliminated the angular, anorexic edge that she’d never before been able to shed and, while Harlow had always been beautiful, now she was breathtaking.
“What’s shakin’ hon? Besides that baby of yours?” I kissed her on the cheek and led her to the firmest chair we had. “Here, this should work. I thought you were sticking close to home now that you’re near your due date.”
“Yeah, but I was out this way for a meeting, so thought I’d drop by.” She edged into the chair with a sigh of relief. “My ankles are swollen up as big as your boobs, Em.”