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“I know who Logan Stray is!” Amber sounded as if she’d come up with the answer to Final Jeopardy.
Someone else knocked on the door.
“Will everybody leave me the hell alone?” Piper shouted.
But Jen had already opened the door, and Berni stormed in. Her short hair erupted in an orange geyser around her face, and a pair of pink sweatpants poked out from under another of Howard’s old cardigans. “I knew it! You all came here so you could talk about me behind my back!” She spotted Logan on the floor. “Isn’t he a little young for you, Piper?”
Piper buried her face in her hands. “Will somebody please kill me?”
Berni rounded on Amber. “You’re behind this secret meeting. You think I’m too old to know what I saw with my own eyes. Next thing you’ll try to get me hauled off to a nursing home.”
Piper lunged for the coffee.
“Calm down, Berni,” Jen said. “Stop being so mean to Amber.”
“Me?! Why don’t you tell her to stop being so hateful to me?”
Maybe it was the coffee or the sugar from the doughnuts, but Amber, like Tosca about to hurl herself from the battlement, reared up to her full height and advanced. “I have never been hateful to you, but from the day we met, you’ve either acted as if I didn’t exist or been outright—”
“You called me Mrs. Berkovitz!”
“—or you’ve been outright rude. I was brought up to be respectful of my elders, but—”
“There!” Berni pointed an accusing finger at all of them. “Did you hear what she said? Did you hear what she called me?”
Mild-mannered Amber’s anger was a sight to behold. “Regardless of your age, there’s no excuse for racial prejudice!”
Berni puffed up. “What racial prejudice? Stop trying to change the subject. And how can you talk about respect after the way you’ve treated me?”
Jen was still looking dumbfounded, but Piper was starting to get the drift.
“I’ve treated you with nothing but respect!” Amber exclaimed.
“Like I’m in my coffin. You call that respectful? Jumping in front of me to open doors . . . running out to get my new
spaper in the winter because you think I’m too old and weak to get it for myself . . . You think I don’t see what you do, but I still have eyes. Piper doesn’t behave like that. Neither does Jen. Is that respectful?”
Amber’s mouth closed on its way to its next sentence. Jen laughed.
Somebody had to be the grown-up here, and Piper figured she was it. “Amber,” she said with forced patience. “Berni doesn’t hate your guts because you’re Korean . . .”
Berni protested. “What does Korean have to do with anything?”
“She hates you because you were brought up to be respectful of your elders,” Piper said. “Which she is.”
“That was unnecessary,” Berni sniffed. “And I don’t hate her.”
Piper gave Berni a sickeningly sweet smile. “Berni is too old to change her ways, and too inarticulate to have explained what’s been bothering her, so from now on, don’t do another considerate thing for her. Matter of fact, treat her like crap. Then maybe she’ll appreciate you the same way Jen and I do.”
“I don’t know why you’re saying all this,” Berni grumbled. “Amber’s a smart girl. She knows.”
“I didn’t know!” Amber exclaimed. “How could I?”
Berni’s mouth arranged itself in something approaching a pout. “I don’t like feeling old.”
“Good,” Piper said, “because you’re acting like a five-year-old.”
Amber’s proper Korean upbringing once again reared itself. “Piper, you shouldn’t say—” She caught herself and took a deep breath. “Berni, from now on, you can get your own newspaper.”
