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Jubilee turned. The woman standing in front of her was a little chunky, with short, spiky hair and a hard edge to her face. She was obviously familiar to Lana.
She had a little diamond stud in one nostril and a tattoo of a dragon that snaked up her left arm. The muscle shirt she wore showed it off the whole way to her shoulder.
“Lana. In the kitchen as always. Little Betty homemaker,” the lady said with a bit of a smirk. Then her eyes landed on Jubilee who had turned from the oven and grabbed the dishrag to wipe the counter.
“So you already hired help for the summer?” she asked, without introducing herself.
“Eva, this is Jubilee. And her two daughters, Scarlett and Penelope. They’re about the same age as Nora. Maybe they’ll be playmates this summer.”
“They look a little younger than Nora. Nora’s very mature for her age,” Eva said, neither returning Lana’s smile nor responding to the invitation of playmates for their girls.
Jubilee wasn’t quite sure what the tension in the air was from, but she suspected that there was more to Eva than met the eye.
“Nora is one of my grandchildren. Matt’s daughter,” Lana said, turning to Jubilee and telling her in a voice that wasn’t quite as full of fun and friendship as it had been before. It seemed like there was a bit of stress in it.
“I’m Matt’s dirty little secret,” Eva said, wrinkling her face up into a not-quite smirk.
“I see. I guess it was a very good secret, since I didn’t know about it. I just started yesterday, though, so I suppose that’s why.” Jubilee didn’t really know what else to say. Eva didn’t seem to be in the kitchen trying to make friends.
“I asked Matt if I could stay at his cottage, since you might as well know I left my husband. He’s just a big stick-in-the-mud. Never wants to do anything fun, and gets all upset if I do.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I’ll be getting a divorce settlement at some point, but until then, I need a place to stay. Like I said, Matt’s a prude. And he doesn’t want me staying with him. He suggested I find a place here.” She looked at Jubilee like Jubilee was standing in her way of having a beautiful summer home.
“If you need me to move out of my room—”
“Of course not. That’s yours. And that’s final.” Lana turned back toward Eva. “I have a mother-in-law suite in the basement if you’d like that. It has everything you need. It’s like a studio apartment. I mean, I assume Nora is still staying with Matt?”
“That’s the agreement. Nora wouldn’t think of staying anywhere else. She just thinks the beach cottage is the best. Some of us have to work for what we get,” Eva said, and there was an eye roll in the tone of her voice.
Like somehow Matt didn’t work to earn what he had.
“We weren’t all born on farms.”
Jubilee tried to focus on cleaning the counters and was grateful that her daughters were both quiet. Obviously there was some bad blood somewhere, or maybe Eva just walked around with a chip on her shoulder.
“Anyway. I’ll take you up on that. Unless Matt relents and lets me stay at his house. He told me he thought it wouldn’t look good if he and I were living together.” She put her fingers up and did air quotes around “living together,” like it was obvious that they wouldn’t be doing anything other than staying in the same house. And that living together implied a lot more.
Jubilee wished she and her girls were out of the kitchen, because it seemed like there was so much tension radiating off Eva, and it made her nervous. She didn’t like it when people couldn’t get along. She’d much rather have smooth sailing, which was probably normal and something everyone wanted.
But of course, that wasn’t the way life worked out for most people, and sometimes, all people needed was someone to be friendly to them.
“If you decide that your daughter might want to spend some time with my girls, we could have a beach day together,” she said, unable to come up with any other idea of anything to say.
“Oh, I think Nora would love—”
“Most of the time when Nora’s here, she spends her days with Matt. That’s the agreement. He gets her in the summer and two weeks at Christmas. I get her the rest of the time. Knowing Matt, if I tried to take Nora to have a beach day with friends, he’d complain that I was taking her from him.”
“All right,” Jubilee said, unsure what else to say.
“Do you need help carrying your things in?” she finally asked, wishing the zucchini bread would hurry up and get done.
“Actually, that’d be great. Since I don’t think there’s an outside entrance to the mother-in-law suite in the basement, is there?” Eva asked, turning toward Lana.
“Nope. You have to come in through the house. The kitchen door’s the best door to come through, because the steps are right there. But the front door is always open, as you know.”
“They want to relegate me to the basement. The dungeon. I’m not what their family is proud of. They’re all goody-two-shoes Christians, and I’m just the big reminder that Matt screwed up and had sex before he was married.” She looked over her shoulder. “Am I allowed to say sex in this house?” she asked Lana.
“I don’t think you’re shocking anyone, but sometimes what we’re allowed to say and what’s prudent to say are two different things,” Lana said, still sounding friendly, but there was a chill in her tone that Jubilee noticed right away. She didn’t like someone making fun of her Christian values. Maybe it was because of the girls standing at the sink. After all, if they were exposed to people who mocked their faith, it was possible that they might start to question why they would stay with it, especially when everyone made fun of them. It was a dangerous thing when a kid wasn’t sure if their foundation was secure.
It took a strong person to continue to stand for what they believed when everyone around them tried to convince them that they were prudish and old-fashioned.
