“How much hair will you cut away?”
He chuckled. “No matter how minor the hair removal, the women are always concerned about their hair,” he said, with a smile.
She shrugged. “I don’t really want to walk around with a bald spot on my head.”
“I don’t think that’s the most important issue right now,” Mack said in a repressive tone.
She glared at him. “Nobody asked you.”
“Nope,” he said, “nobody did. But, if you don’t want me calling Nan and telling her about this, then you’ll behave yourself, starting now.”
“That’s just blackmail. That’s what it is.”
“Maybe, but, as long as it works, I don’t really care.”
And again she glared at him, but it was futile. Because he really would call Nan. “You’ll just make her worry needlessly,” she muttered. “Besides,” she said, as an afterthought, “she probably already knows.”
Chapter 2
Saturday Early Afternoon …
Of course Doreen was right. Nan did already know, and she was in a fine mess by the time Mack finally drove Doreen home. As she slowly made her way out of the truck, refusing to wait for him to come around and help her, the front door of the house burst open, and chaos ensued, as the animals flew out toward her. Nan stood on the front step, shaking her head. She looked at Doreen’s face and cried out, “Oh my. Oh, dear. Oh, my dear.”
Mack walked around the truck, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and helped her up the steps. In the meantime, Mugs barked and jumped all around both of them.
“It’s okay, Mugs,” Doreen murmured, feeling a whole lot woozier than she had expected. Once inside, she collapsed on the first pot chair and reflected on the fact that she’d gotten rid of all the other furniture. “It’d be nice if I had something comfy to sit on,” she muttered.
Mack snorted at that. “If you hadn’t sold everything, you might have.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s sold or not,” she said. “I haven’t heard from Scott in weeks.”
“Oh, dear, I hope it’s okay,” Nan said.
“I would hope so,” Doreen muttered. The moment she sat down, Goliath jumped into her lap. Tears collected in the corner of her eyes, as she hugged the great big behemoth. She looked over at Mack. “Thaddeus?”
He shook his head slowly. She buried her face against Goliath, her shoulders trembling. Nan clucked at her side, gently patting her shoulder. “We’ll find him. I know we will.”
Doreen nodded. “I know. I know,” she said, “but …” And she let her voice trail off. It must be the painkillers making her mumble like an idiot. She wasn’t normally like this.
Nan stepped back and said, “I’ll put on the teakettle.” She turned and raced into the kitchen.
“How do you find a bird?” she asked Mack.
“Well, everybody knows about him, and everybody knows what he looks like,” he added. “And, yes, we’ve put out an alert, asking everybody to keep an eye out for him.”
A few minutes later, as she sat here, cuddling Goliath, Nan returned with a tray. Doreen looked at the tray and asked, “Where did you find that?”
Nan seemed momentarily confused. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I just reached into the cupboard, where I always kept it, and there it was.”
Doreen frowned and studied the tray, but she didn’t know if it was something that maybe Mack had kept and decided that they needed when they were sorting stuff or if they had missed something else in the kitchen. Nan looked around for a place to put the tray, and Mack hopped up, grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and brought it over and put it there for her.
“You know what?” he said. “You might feel better if we sat outside.”
“We might,” Doreen said, with a yawn. “But I don’t have anything to sit on out there either.”
“There is that,” Nan said. “When you get the money for the antiques, you’ll have to buy yourself some outdoor furniture.”
“I need to buy some indoor furniture first,” she said, with a note of humor. “A couple chairs in this living room really don’t do the job.”
“Not if you’ll be a socialite,” Nan said, with alacrity.
Doreen gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’ll admit that I’ve had more people through this place than I thought possible over these last few weeks,” she said, “but that won’t continue.”
“No, maybe not,” Nan said, “but you’d be surprised. People will start to gather around you now.”
“Why would they do that?” Doreen asked, looking at her grandmother in surprise.
“Because you’re becoming somebody,” Nan said, with that wise look in her eye. “Everybody wants to be around somebody.”
“I’m a nobody,” she said, with a yawn. “And apparently those painkillers are really having an effect on me.” She reached up and rubbed her face gently.
“Maybe you should go lie down,” Mack said.
She shrugged, then shook her head, wincing. “It’s pretty early though.”
“Still, a nap won’t hurt,” he said.
“Maybe not, but it feels like I already had one out in the grass.”
“That one was unintended,” Nan said. “By the way, I would make you something to eat, but there’s not much food in the house.”
At that, Doreen grimaced. “I haven’t done any grocery shopping.”
Nan stood here, her hands on her hips, her fingers moving up and down, almost like a piano rhythm. “Are you eating?”
“Of course I am,” she protested. Nan looked over at Mack, then peered down at Doreen. “But are you eating enough?”
“Well, I stopped losing weight,” she said, “so I would presume so.”
But Nan didn’t appear to be satisfied with that either. “Do I need to go grocery shop for you?”
“Not at all,” she said forcibly. “I’m fine.”
Nan sniffed. “I don’t want you so worried about money that you’re afraid to spend it.”
“Now that’s a lesson she needs to learn,” Mack said. “She is definitely afraid to spend it.”
“Well, it’s just that I don’t really know where the next dollar is coming from,” Doreen protested. “So it’s a little hard to go out and just spend money, if I don’t know that I’m getting more.”
“I was hoping you’d be getting on okay by now,” Nan stated, her worry evident in her tone.
“Well, if I get the antiques sold, I will be,” she said. “And I’m not doing badly, but I don’t really have much in the way of prospects for getting a decent job. People look at me differently now.”
“Of course they do,” Nan said. “Like I said, you’re somebody.”
“I’m somebody without a job,” she said in exasperation.
“Where have you tried?” Nan asked.
“I haven’t really,” Doreen said glumly. “I started on my résumé and then didn’t know what to say because there’s really nothing to put down. How do you list socialite as an occupation?” Both Mack and Nan stopped, then looked at each other and over at her. She shrugged. “So you can see the problem, right?”