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After Vince left, I got dressed and drove my candy apple red, twenty-year-old, fully-restored-by-Vince-Cooper Camry up to the Pink House (formerly the Blue House until Mickey Pitts tried to burn it down and my boss bought it and painted over the scorch-stained blue with sunset-on-the-beach pink), still a little woozy from not enough sleep and just the right amount of sex. We have some things to work out about living together, neither one of us is good with change, but we’ve got the sex down.
I parked in front of the house and went in to find Anemone, blonde and beautiful as ever and looking a good twenty years younger than her sixty-five, yawning over a sheaf of papers at one end of the breakfast table. These early mornings where she had to be up before noon took their toll on her, but that didn’t mean every eyelash wasn’t in place. She was nodding blankly at the dark-haired, violet-eyed seven-year-old beside her who was explaining the finer points of karate with the appropriate hand gestures.
“Liz knows this stuff,” Peri Blue told her accusingly.
“Don’t make Anemone listen to details before noon,” I told Peri as I sat down at the other end of the table. “You know she doesn’t do mornings.”
“What t-shirt today?” Peri asked. She has developed a keen interest in t-shirts since we started hanging out together and has managed to snaffle three of them out of my collection: the one about squirting lemon juice in the eyes of your enemies, the one with the Wile E. Coyote mugshot that I hadn’t worn since George had arrested me, and one of the Boynton shirts, the one that has chickens on it and says, “Strange Things Are Happening,” which was sure as hell true for that poor kid’s life, so I had to let her have that one.
I had another Boynton on today, this one saying “Ready, Willing, and Vaguely Competent,” which was about where I was today, given my lack of sleep and plentitude of sex. Plus, I’d had no time to run my five miles, which was pretty much what I needed to really wake up.
I checked under the table for Veronica, Anemone’s English Cream dachshund, otherwise known as the Blonde Beggar, knowing she’d be pressed up against somebody’s leg in hopes of misplaced food. Sure enough, she was sitting right next to Peri, the girl voted Most Likely To Drop A Sausage To An Inbred Dachshund With Issues. Speaking of change, Veronica’s life had seen a lot of it in the past three months, not the least of which was the almost four hundred teddy bears in the living room here that she’d taken to sleeping with. As a dog breed that had been designed to hunt badgers, Veronica’s sleeping with the bears was almost species betrayal, although I was pretty sure Veronica wouldn’t be able to identify a badger if it spit on her. On the other hand, the teddies were soft and good for burrowing. They were overseen by Big Red Bear, the six foot tall teddy bear I’d bought my mother as a guilt birthday gift that had been passed to an ecstatic Peri Blue.
“Exaggeration. I do mornings,” Anemone was saying. “I wouldn’t miss one of Marianne’s breakfasts,” and then Marianne, the most important person in the house because she cooks magnificently, came in and dropped plates full of scrambled eggs and bacon and home fries in front of the two of them, plates that landed softly on extra thick place mats because Anemone had decided that was better than telling Marianne to gently place the plates on the table instead of dropping them from a great height. Because if Marianne was annoyed, she might leave, and nobody wanted that.
Actually, Marianne wasn’t going anywhere. She had a private bedroom, bath, and sitting room in the tower attached to the house by a walkway over a drive-through to the back yard, she loved cooking, she had a magnificent kitchen to work in, and she had no other duties besides feeding us three times a day for which we paid and praised her lavishly because the woman was a genius with food. Marianne, a woman who was basically the love child of Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson, was in hog heaven and she wasn’t going anywhere.
So, I was polite but not groveling when I said, “Marianne, I know I didn’t call ahead but I’m starving—”
She turned on her heel and walked away, and Peri said, “I’ll split mine with you, Liz,” and I was touched, but not touched enough to steal half a growing kid’s breakfast.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I said, “but I can make some toast—”
“Really?” Anemone said. “Because the last time you tried to do that, you—”
Marianne came out of the kitchen with another loaded plate and dropped it in front of me. “This is Molly’s. I’ll do another one for her.”
“I love you, Marianne,” I said and picked up my fork.
You know, I’ve had a lot of lousy scrambled eggs—too dry, crusty, runny, you name it—so I have a vague idea of how hard it is to get them right, but Marianne’s scramble is a work of art, thick moist curds that melt in my mouth, usually mixed with mushrooms or onions or peppers or whatever else Marianne has to hand, not a lot, just enough to give some small extra crunch, a little extra pop of flavor in all that creamy goodness.
Her bacon is divine, too.
So, I had plowed through the heaven on my plate when my lovely blonde sister, Molly, came downstairs and sat next to Anemone, smiling that dreamy smile that said she’d been on the phone with her significant other, the terrifyingly competent and equally lovely Raina Still. Rain was also Vince’s best friend and, I was willing to bet, never busted drywall early in the morning within earshot of Molly. I was happy Molly was in love, Molly deserved it all, but I really didn’t need bliss at breakfast, so I said, “What’s new?”
“Your mother and our father are engaged,” Molly said. “She would like you to answer all the voicemails she’s left on your phone. Brenda Roarke is dating Steve Crider, so we should probably save him because that woman is a beast, her new pixie cut notwithstanding. Crys Lake and Chris Blake are dating, and nobody knows how to Brangelina their names, so that’s causing a stir. Cash Porter is fixing up the old Blue cardboard factory, and something’s going down at the police department because Rain called Vince and he didn’t pick up.” She shot a glance at Anemone. “And Anemone had lunch yesterday with the president of the town council.”
If you’re bored, come to Burney and try to keep a secret. As Vince says, the grapevine here makes sound look slow.
“Now what are you up to?” I said to Anemone as I scooped up the last of the heaven on my plate. I may not like change, but Anemone lives for it.
“The president was concerned about the vacancy on the council,” she said primly. “Since MaryLou got ten years in prison, he felt she should resign, and he offered to appoint me pro tempore until the election in November.”
I scowled at her. “And that was his idea, was it?”
She shrugged; innocence personified. “Well, heasked.”
If the president of the town council, an eighty-six-year-old misogynist, had invited Anemone onto his council, that must have been some lunch.
“What did you do to him?”
“Really, Liz,” Anemone said, waving all that away. “The council just needsorganized.”
“You have big plans, I assume.”
“Well, I do think it’s time he retired.”
“And you took over as president?”
