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“Oh, don’t mind us,” Jolene said, transfixed by the family feud unfolding in front of her. I’m sure it was a novelty for her, considering that most McClaine family disputes ended in both parties phasing and proving their werewolf fighting skills. Usually naked.
“ These are your friends?” Grandma Ruthie sneered, observing my motley group, my chosen family. “ These are the type of people you spend time with under your great-great-grandfather’s roof?”
“Watch it, Grandma,” I warned her, seeing the expression of insult on Andrea’s face. Dick, on the other hand, was used to that sort of comment and remained unperturbed.
“Now, let’s all just calm down,” Mama said in a different tone from the one she normally used during these confrontations. She wasn’t trying to placate Grandma. She was just trying to keep us from coming to blows in her parlor. That was weird.
Grandma drew herself up to her full height and used her matriarch voice. “I will speak my mind, Jane.”
“Well, then, you’ll speak it in the kitchen.” I put my hand under Grandma’s elbow and not-quite-gently led her through the kitchen’s swinging door.
Mama warned, “Now, Jane, be careful.”
“Mama, I’m not going to hurt her.” I sighed.
“No, no, I know that,” Mama assured me. “It’s just that all of my nice dishes are sitting out on the counter. Try not to break anything.”
I barked out a laugh. “Mama!”
“Oh, she’s had it coming for years,” Daddy told me. “Your mama’s just not ready to do it herself yet.”
“I’m working on it,” Mama promised. “She can’t keep talking to you that way. I’ve let it go on for far too long. Maybe if I’d stood up to her years ago, we’d have a better relationship. You and I might have had a better relationship. I’m trying to set some boundaries with her, honey, but she’s so old. And I’m so—”
“Scared of her?” I suggested.
Mama nodded. “Give her hell, baby.”
That said, I squared my shoulders and marched into the kitchen to face off with my tiny septuagenarian foe.
“Be as rude to me as you’d like,” I told her. “But don’t ever insult the people in that room in my presence, do you understand me?”
“Don’t you talk to me that way,” Grandma snapped. “You were raised to have respect for your elders, Jane.”
“I was raised to have respect for people who show respect to me. That’s something you have never done. Now, why don’t you go home to your half-dead fiancé and let me and Jenny figure out our issues for ourselves?”
Grandma stamped her size-six orthopedic shoe. “You will apologize to your sister, Jane. And you will end this foolishness with the lawsuit and give Jenny her share of the Early legacy. I command it.”
I goggled at the raging geriatric before me and then burst out laughing so loudly that Gabriel stuck his head through the doorway to check on me. I waved him away as I leaned against the counter for support and let the bloody tears roll down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I said, giggling. “Did you just command me to do something? Have we met? Has that ever worked for you? Jenny got her share of the ‘Early legacy.’ She took it, out of the house one piece at a time, without asking. And so did you. You’ve been smuggling valuables out of that house since Aunt Jettie’s funeral. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“Let me tell you something about your precious aunt Jettie,” Grandma spat.
In the corner of my eye, I could see Aunt Jettie squinting at the dry-erase marker Mama kept on her refrigerator. She grasped it and began to scrawl on the front of the fridge. Ruthie’s face froze in horror as an invisible hand eked out, “Ruthie … This is Jettie … I need … to tell you … you’ve gotten fat.”
“Jane, I don’t know how you’re doing that, but stop it. It’s morbid,” Grandma scolded, her face paling.
“I’m not doing it,” I said. “I’m telepathic, not telekinetic. Aunt Jettie, maybe you shouldn’t …”
Aunt Jettie winked at me. “Honey, she’s had this coming for years.”
“Jane, stop that right now!” Grandma yelled as Jettie called her a “natural brunette,” underlining “natural” three times.
“It’s not me, it’s Jettie,” I said. “She’s been haunting the house ever since she died. I wasn’t able to see her until I was turned.”
“Of all the sick jokes,” Grandma Ruthie spat. “How dare you use my sister’s memory this way!”
“Oh, come on, you can believe in vampires but not in ghosts?”
Grandma Ruthie sneered at me.
