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Chapter 3
“That is a terribleidea,” Eleanor said, trying to be the voice of reason. Sally, her best friend, was several years younger than she was, and she hardly ever noticed the age difference. Except today, it seemed like Sally had reverted back to being a teenager, and Eleanor felt like her grandmother.
“It’s a perfect idea. Peter couldn’t dance because he had just gotten punch for his brother. But he’s a farmer, so he loves animals, and if I can just get him and Norma Jean alone together, I know they’d hit it off.”
Sally had somehow overheard a brief exchange between Peter and her cousin and had immediately started plotting on how she could get the two of them alone without any distractions like brothers or punch. She always had some kind of plan up her sleeve, and usually it was to help people. As this purportedly was. However, Eleanor had her doubts about this one.
“Kidnapping someone is a felony.” She had no idea what kind of crime it was. She just knew that a person couldn’t kidnap someone and think it was okay.
“I’m not kidnapping anyone. I’m simply going to talk him into seeing something with me, and then once we’ve done that, I’ll leave him there and have Norma Jean come save him. There’s a storm coming tonight, and they might possibly get snowed in together, which is perfect. This is the perfect storm.”
Wasn’t there a book with that name? Eleanor got sidetracked for just a moment as she had a tendency to do. Her brain just went in different directions, and no one ever really understood how she managed to connect the things she did. But it made perfect sense to her.
By the time she came back to focusing on what was going on in front of her, Sally was knee-deep in her plan.
“There’s a mama cat with baby kittens, and I’ll just have him come help me with them. I’ll say that she’s having trouble delivering or something.”
“So there’s no mother?”
“There is. She’s just not in distress. Not that I know of anyway.”
“And there are kittens?”
“There’s going to be kittens. Someday.” Sally had a pleading look on her face. “Please. I’ve been taking care of Wilma for the past six months, and I’ve barely gotten out. At all. In fact, this is the first fun thing that I’ve done, aside from going to the pharmacy and picking up Depends, in months. Please. We’ll leave tonight, knowing we did a good deed for Norma Jean, plus, having fun ourselves, and not keep feeling like the rest of the world has passed us by, along with all the fun everyone else is having.”
“I don’t feel like that,” Eleanor said. Although she did feel bad for Sally. She really had been taking care of her Aunt Wilma who had been bedridden since her stroke.
Eleanor felt guilty that she hadn’t helped Sally more. A caretaker’s job was an extremely difficult one, and Sally hardly ever complained.
Eleanor hated to turn her down for this one small request.
Actually, kidnapping a grown man was a rather big request. But still... She sighed. Was this just a part of her never-wanting-to-do-anything-fun personality? Wasn’t she just thinking earlier that she needed to turn over a new leaf?
Of course, that hadn’t worked out very well for her. The new leaf that she turned over had gotten smashed underneath Franklin’s foot.
She lifted her eyes to where he had been standing in the corner. He was gone.
And it was just as well. She hadn’t been able to get her words out properly, which she still wanted to crawl under the table about, but he hadn’t been very polite either, answering the phone in the middle of their conversation, such as it was, since she hadn’t been able to actually say anything coherent, and then turning away from her with a wave of his hand.
She wanted to be mad at him, but she knew she was the one to blame. She, who couldn’t get her tongue to work when it needed to.
She could hardly blame him.
“All right. Here’s the plan, we’re going to get Peter to go to a shed on the far side of his property. Remember we used to play there when we were kids?”
“I remember. But I still think this isn’t a good idea.”
“Listen, they can’t say that we’re kidnapping him if we take him to his own property, right?”
