Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,86

from close to the road. “They probably have all kinds of diseases.”

The faster I ran, the faster the hens ran away from me. Within mere moments of giving chase, it was clear that I wasn’t going to catch them. I couldn’t do anything but give up and return to the truck.

My twine tying needed serious work. Somehow it had come loose and the chickens had worked themselves free.

Holly started laughing when I explained what had happened. “Once Stanley sees his chickens in his girlfriend’s yard, he’s going to know you were here spying on him.”

“So were you.”

“I’ll deny it.”

“Thanks a lot.” I looked up the drive, hoping to see the chickens running back down. No such luck. “Chickens aren’t wild animals,” I said. “They won’t last one night out in the open without shelter. A raccoon will finish them off. What should we do?”

Then I heard Stanley’s voice coming from the general direction of the cottage.

“What the hell! Why, these look like. . . . they are! How did my chickens get all the way over here?”

With that, we drove off faster than a flying chicken, effectively ending my short-lived career as a chicken farmer.

Thirty-six

“What have you girls been up to?” Grams asked from her position at the kitchen sink where she washed finger-ling potatoes I’d dug up from my garden.

“Nothing much,” Holly said. “Just working hard.”

“Or hardly working,” Mom chimed in.

I’d had a nice big glass of wine to prepare myself for the ordeal. I could have used an entire bottle.

“How about a beverage?” Grams asked, wiping her hands on a towel. By beverage she meant, in her genteel manner, an alcoholic beverage.

“No thanks,” Holly said.

“That’s my girl,” Mom said. “Booze ages a woman.”

“I’ll help myself,” I said, pouring a generous glass of wine.

“See,” Mom pointed out, casting me a look of disappointment.

That firstborn daughter thing was really getting to me. She wanted to control me or break me, or whatever mean people do. I planned on resisting until the bitter end. How could Grams stand to live with her?

The inquisition began immediately and continued through the meal prep as Grams fixed the potatoes, Holly and I whipped up an enormous garden salad, and Mom fried chicken. Here’s the gist of the conversation, all pointed directly at me:• That Carrie Ann, how anybody would trust her with a cash register full of money was beyond my mother.

• Speaking of the store, were we focusing on safety in numbers and doing as she told us to do or did she have to get more involved in the daily running of the store to protect us?

• How was the family going to recover from my sordid divorce and now rumors of my brazen affair with a married dead man, which happened to be the talk of the town? That poor woman, Grace. I should find my own man, not one already taken.

• Why was I seeing Hunter when he used to be such a drunk and those kind don’t change their stripes. (That comment also proved that everybody in town but me knew about Hunter’s former problem with alcohol.)

• Which brought us to that “nice boy,” Dennis Martin, who’d had a crush on me since grade school and was still available and would make a perfect marital partner.

“He’s gay,” I said, drinking faster.

“You aren’t taking any pills, are you?” Grams said. “We don’t want a repeat of last time after the funeral.”

“I was perfectly fine.”

“That man slept over at your house,” Mom said.

“He did not. Hunter escorted me home and left. Your sources are wrong.”

“Now, Helen,” Grams said. “You’re being awful hard on Story. She a successful businesswoman and she’ll get her personal life in order soon. She’s just going through a transition, that’s all. Aren’t you, Sweetie?”

“And that dead woman’s earring,” Mom continued, not hearing anything but her own voice. “How did it get in your office?”

“I’m giving you a pill,” Grams said to Mom. “You’re getting worked up.”

“I’m fine,” Mom said, turning the chicken in the skillet. I wished she’d take the offered medication.

Why I’d arrived early to take all this abuse, before the dinner was on the table, was a mystery. It seemed an eternity but finally the meal was ready, and we took our positions, each of us having established a permanent seating arrangement as family members seem to do.

We squared off at Grams’s table, Mom sitting directly across from me.

“Is it true?” Mom asked after Grams got a nice picture of her “three favorite people.”

“Can’t we