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“Is it always like this?” I whispered to Piper when Betty had moved on.
“Pretty much,” she replied quietly. “I’ll tell you who’s who in a minute, but my grandma is—”
“Hello, dear.” Her grandma approached and held out a hand for me. “I’m Vicki, Piper’s grandmother. And you are?”
At least she hadn’t asked about my ass yet. “Maverick Donovan, ma’am. It’s lovely to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Absolutely none of it is true.” She beamed, and the smile was almost identical to Piper’s. “But everything I have to tell you about her absolutely is.”
“Grandma!”
The old man next to her chuckled and shook my head. “Randy. Good to know ya.”
“You, too, sir.”
“Got any of those chocolate fudge cakes, Piper?”
“There’s a slice with your name on it.” She smiled at him. “Just remember to take your teeth out this time.”
He chortled. “Last time I forgot and stuck my chompers together.”
“Randy, quick, before Rosie raids all the good stuff.” Vicki tugged at his arm, and together they shuffled off. “Come in soon, dear!” she called over her shoulder to Piper.
“We will!” Piper called back, waving after her. “Come on. Outside, quickly. Before Mabel gets over here.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the porch, down the hallway, and through some large sliding double doors that opened when she hit a big button at the side.
We walked out into the pleasant afternoon air, heading toward a pond that had several ducks swimming in.
“I think I need therapy after that,” I said after a few minutes.
“That is the general consensus,” she replied, sitting on a bench. “I thought they might have been done with the class by the time we arrived. In hindsight, I should have dropped the bakery stuff and ran. There is a bright side, though?”
“There’s a bright side to seniors painting genitalia-inspired fruit?”
“You’re now officially welcomed to White Peak.” She grinned at me. “You survived.”
“Survived is one word.”
“You could use them next time you have writer’s block.”
“I’m not entirely sure how they fit into a book, to be honest.” I shook my head. “I can’t see any situation in which my characters would have grandparents who paint food pornography and hit on twenty-something young men.”
She shrugged. “They always ask all young guys if they have nice bums. It’s kind of what they do. Should have seen Agatha and Mabel after Sebastian came back to town. They almost stalked him.”
“Is that… normal?”
“No, not at all.”
I frowned. “So why don’t you tell them to stop?”
She looked at me. “Do you think anyone could stop them? They’ve reached the age that they genuinely don’t care. Agatha says she’s lived her life abiding by other peoples’ rules, and now she’s in her eighties, the only rules she’ll live by are the ones she makes herself. You try telling her that’s not how it works.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Actually, it makes perfect sense. I suspect that when I’m eighty I won’t really want to live by anyone else’s rules, either.”
“I know I won’t.” Piper laughed, tucking her dark blonde hair behind her ear. “I don’t really do that now, to be honest.”
I chuckled. “So who is everyone?”
“Randy is Kinsley’s grandpa, Amos is Seb’s, Agatha is Tori’s grandma, Mabel is Saylor’s, and Rosie is Holley and London’s.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Holley came from Rosie?”
“Not directly, but yeah.” She smirked. “We’ve all wondered how that happened for years.”
No kidding. From what I’d just seen, Holley couldn’t be any more different from her grandmother.
I looked around the expansive area. “Why can’t they fence in the ducks?”
“Hm?” Piper blinked at me. “Like the whole pond?”
“Their house is right there. Why not fence in the ducks? It looks like the chickens are fenced in to stop them going in the pond.”
She nodded. “The chickens are only allowed out everywhere when everyone is outside. One of the chicks drowned so that’s a new rule.”
“Right.” I shook my head. This place was wild, but it was funny, because it was the exact kind of place my own grandmother should have ended up living in. Not the boring concrete jungle she’d died in.
I leaned back on the bench and sighed. It was nice here—peaceful, despite the ruckus that was inevitably going on inside. The ducks periodically dipped their heads under the water, occasionally going so far as to stick their behinds right in the air with a little shake.
It’d been a long time since I’d just stopped and sat down. My mind was always working—on the next book, the next deadline, the next proposal. There was always an idea or something to write down, but sitting here, next to Piper, watching the ducks do their thing, I just felt…
Silence.
Like my mind could clear for the first time in months.
“You look like you’re thinking about something.”
I peered over at her. “Actually, I’m not. For the first time in a while. It’s so peaceful out here.”
