Silenced by the Yams - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,5
old dog new tricks’?”
Even Howard was getting annoyed with the dog’s high-pitched woof. He snatched up the furball and marched out of the room. I sipped on my coffee until he returned sans-pooch.
“Where did you put him?” I asked.
“Amber’s room. She likes to dress him in her doll clothes.”
I laughed. Puddles wasn’t my favorite animal, but I did feel a little sorry for him, suffering the humiliation of being forced into a lace dress and bloomers.
For a moment, I relished my luck at having such a handsome and sensitive husband. He looked like George Clooney, for crying out loud. Really, I’m not making it up—everyone says so. A little more gray, a little less chin, but definitely Clooney-esque. And for every part of gorgeous on the outside, he contained an equal part of beautiful on the inside.
“So,” I asked, “what time is it? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
He looked at his watch. “It’s ten o’clock, Sleeping Beauty. And I have the day off because I’m picking my mother up from the airport, remember?”
I would have slapped my forehead if both hands weren’t wrapped around my coffee mug. “Oh, schnitzel! It’s Monday. Having a man heave his intestinal enzymes all over me must have affected my short term memory.” I held up the mug. “I might need three or four more of these to get me going.”
A solemn look crossed his face at the mention of my adventurous evening. He sat on the edge of the bed. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”
I threw back the covers, placed my coffee mug on the side table, and climbed out of bed intent on getting things done. I had to finish cleaning before Howard’s mother arrived with her white gloves. “I swear, Howard, it wasn’t my fault. And I didn’t go looking for trouble this time, either. I was an innocent bystander to a grisly death. It could happen to anyone. When does Mama Marr’s plane land?”
“One twenty. I wanted to talk to you about something, first.”
I was slipping into a pair of shorts when I decided I’d need another shower first. A clean house was important, but greeting Howard’s mother with smelly pits and scary hair would cancel out the attention I’d put into ridding the house of dust bunnies and moldy window frames. “Talk about what? Can’t it wait? I have floors to vacuum and ovens to clean.”
“The oven can wait.”
I shook my head and slipped the shorts back off. “No. I forgot to clean the oven last time she visited. She spent the first two days scrubbing it herself, and the rest of her time complaining that the work had aggravated her arthritis. I live with enough guilt as a mother of three daughters. I don’t need to worry that I’m killing your mother, too.”
He grabbed my hands as I headed to the bathroom. “This won’t take long. Just give me a few minutes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Not wrong. Just—”
Bethany called up from downstairs. “Daddy!” she shouted. “Your cell phone is ringing!”
Howard threw his hands in the air, frustrated.
I gave him a quick peck on the lips which turned into a lingering kiss. A vision of Mama Marr wrinkling her nose at my grimy kitchen made me pull away before the kiss turned into anything more. “Get your phone and I’ll get a shower.”
The hot, steamy shower was so heavenly that I delayed my chores longer than I probably should have. A night’s sleep had softened the horror of the previous evening, but a third shower was exactly what I needed to kick-start my morning. I thought about Andy Baugh and wondered how he was feeling. He’d looked so desolate the last time I saw him. That was when they wheeled Kurt’s body out of the banquet room on a gurney.
After the shower, I slipped into the shorts and a t-shirt and ran some mousse through my curly hair, noting that a few more gray strands had moved in. I’d throw on some makeup and get into a nicer set of clothes after cleaning. Grabbing the coffee mug, I threw back another swig as if it were a shot of tequila, then padded my way downstairs to round up the girls and begin Operation Dirt-be-gone.
When I hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs, the front door opened into me, causing my coffee to spill all over the foyer rug.
“Oh, Spam!” Yes, “Spam” is an interesting interjection, but necessary since the day my six-year-old Amber was