Page 245 of Wild Card 13

She patted my jaw once, fingers cool from the orange juice carton. There it was, the one little-boy moment she still got away with. “You shaved badly.”

“I shaved in the dark.”

“You own lights.”

“I was preserving electricity.”

“You were preserving electricity, not smarts.” She handed me a carton of eggs. “Cook.”

I took the eggs. “Good morning to you too.”

Grandpa Hal turned a page he had already read. “She has been looking forward to this since yesterday.”

“I have not,” Grandma hushed.

“She took the sausages out last night.”

“That is called preparation.”

“She told the butcher you were coming.”

“That is called conversation.” Grandma pointed a wooden spoon at him. “Now, Harold Burns, if you want breakfast, you will stop that yammering.”

I set the eggs on the counter and grinned. “Full Irish?”

“You offered,” Grandma Ruth sang out. “And I heard full Irish.” She moved toward the coffeemaker with the satisfied expression of a woman whose interpretation had become law.

I washed my hands, then started pulling things from the refrigerator. Eggs. Sausage. Rashers wrapped in butcher paper. Tomatoes. Mushrooms. Leftover potatoes my grandmother had absolutely saved for this purpose while pretending coincidence was real. Beans from the pantry because Grandma Ruth had decided years ago that if something came from a can but went into a saucepan, it counted as cooking.

The kitchen filled slowly. Heat from the stove. Coffee. Butter hitting the skillet. The faint spice of sausage browning. The cold still clinging to my sleeves from outside. Grandpa Hal’s paperrustling. Grandma Ruth correcting my heat level even though I had been trusted to cook my own food for years.

“Too high,” she said.

“It’s medium.”

“Medium on that burner is not medium.”

“I’m aware of how burners work.”

Grandpa Hal lifted his mug. “It has been temperamental since 2018.”

“It is a stove,” I said.

“It has moods,” Grandma replied.

I turned the tomatoes cut side down in the pan. “This family explains a lot about me.”

Grandpa Hal made a low sound that might have been a laugh.

Grandma Ruth carried her coffee to the table and settled into her chair. “Speaking of explanations.” She smiled into her mug. “How is Lucy?”

I kept my eyes on the pan. I should have expected it. Grandma Ruth could smuggle fudge into an arena under three blankets and manipulate a seating chart with a tote bag, but emotional subtlety was not her preferred weapon when she had already decided the room could survive the truth. “She’s good,” I muttered.

“That is an answer you give the dentist.”

I moved the mushrooms around. “She’s busy.”

“That is an answer you give someone at church when you want to leave.”