Jon smirks.
I bite my lip.
“This is my friend Ivy,” he says. “Ivy, this is Stella Sinclair.”
Stella? Isn’t that the name of the woman he got into the fight about? Something to do with weed?
The old woman grabs my hands, and I can’t help noticing how gnarled her fingers are. It has to be painful.
“Jon’s never brought a girl to meet me before. This is such a treat. Please, come in.” She steps aside and we walk in. “I hope you’re hungry, Ivy. When I know Jon’s coming, I make lots of food.”
“And I appreciate it.” Jon gives her a kiss on the cheek, then turns back to me. “Stella is the best cook. Everything she makes is awesome.”
Neither of us mentions that we just ate a huge breakfast.
She slaps his arm, but I can tell she loves the compliment. “Anything has to be better than what a houseful of young men can cook up. It’s really not a testament to my cooking at all. He’s got nothing good to compare it to.”
“When the guys know I’ve been here,” Jon says, “they descend on the leftovers like a pack of vultures.”
We follow her through the foyer, down a short hall dotted with family pictures, and into a cheery kitchen.
She motions for us to sit down, then proceeds to fuss over us. Soon I’ve got a glass of iced tea in front of me, along with a fragrant bowl of chicken soup. In the center of the table, Stella sets down a plate stacked with triangle sandwiches. I haven’t had a sandwich cut that way since I was a kid.
“Please, don’t wait for me,” she says. “I want you to eat before the soup gets cold. I’ve got to get these cookies out of the oven.”
I take a sandwich and bite into it. Oh my God. It’s tuna salad on steroids. “This is sooo good.”
“Told you.” Jon reaches for a second one. What the heck. I do, too.
“What’s in it, Mrs. Sinclair?”
“Please, call me Stella.” She sits across from Jon and folds a napkin over her lap. “I start with all the normal ingredients. Mayo, salt and pepper, pickles, a little dill weed. But I also add chopped jalapeños and pepperoncinis from a jar.”
I would never have thought to add all that stuff. “No wonder it’s so good.”
“How was the garage sale?” Jon asks.
She waves a hand in front of her face like she’s batting away a fly. “Just a few people showed up. I sat out there all morning and hardly sold a thing.”
I take a sip of my iced tea. Peach, I think. “If you decide to do another one, let me know. Back home, my mom, my aunt, and I used to go garage-saling all the time. I’ve helped my mom organize a few that have been pretty successful.”
“So you’re a bargain shopper,” Jon says, nodding his head. “I didn’t know that about you.”
There’s a lot he doesn’t know about me. “Yep. Flea markets. Antique shops. Love it all.”
Stella dabs her mouth with her napkin. “It just so happens, I used to own an antique shop in town. You should see my attic. It’s overflowing with all sorts of things I’ve collected over the years.”
After lunch, Jon tries to help with the cleanup, but Stella shoos him away. “I don’t get to fuss over young people much anymore, so don’t take this little pleasure away from me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jon says with a grin. “I’ll go check on your plants. Ivy, you okay for a few minutes?”
“Um, sure.”
His footsteps echo down the hall, then a door opens and closes.
Stella dries her hands on a dishtowel. “Just so you know, I grow medical cannabis. It’s the only thing I’ve found that helps with my arthritis pain.”
Cannabis? As in weed? This sweet, little old lady is a stoner? If she told me she was dating Bradley Cooper, I seriously wouldn’t be more surprised.
“Henry Senior would roll over in his grave if he knew what I was doing. He was a juvenile court judge before he retired, so he knew plenty of kids who used it. And their parents. But he’s pushing daisies and I’m here with these blasted hands and hips. Not much he can do about it now, is there?”
“How…how did you think to try it?”
“Jon was the one who suggested it. He lived with me for a short time after his mother passed. I found a pipe and some marijuana in his things and confronted him about it. He said he got it to give to me because it was supposed to help with arthritis.”
“And you believed him?”
“Oh honey, I knew he was feeding me a load of horse manure, but what can I say? I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for that young man. He’s been through a lot. So I went along with him and made him show me how to smoke it. Boy, was I surprised when the pain in my hands lessened. Not completely, but enough that I was able to start knitting again and join the ladies at the club for the daily walking sessions.”
The talk shifts to yarn shops and knitting, much more normal topics to discuss with her, and for that, I’m grateful. Until she gets up, opens a cupboard near the sink, and pulls out a Mason jar filled with tightly packed green buds. “Would you like some to take back with you? I’ve got plenty.”
I almost spit out my iced tea. “Um, no, thank you. I’m good.”
After I help her with the dishes, she empties the leftover soup into a plastic container for Jon and offers me some as well, but I tell her I don’t have a microwave in my room.
I sit back down as Stella puts another batch of cookies into the oven. “So how did you know Jon’s mom? He tells me you were friends.”
“A beautiful girl,” she says wistfully, touching her white curls. “She used to do my hair. I felt so bad for Jon, shuffled off to various foster homes after she was gone.”
My heart lurches in my chest. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for him. Not only losing his mom, but then having to live in a strange home with people he didn’t know. “No family members could take him in? What about his father?”
Stella clucks her tongue and makes a face. “That good-for-nothing piece of— Pardon my language. I know it’s not very Christian, but that man gets no sympathy from me. At all.”
“Who doesn’t?” Jon asks, striding back into the kitchen.
Stella flicks her hand as if to brush away his question. “We’re just chatting about this and that. I was telling Ivy— Oh, son, what’s all over your hands? They’re filthy.” She hands him a kitchen towel and ushers him to the sink. “Careful, I just mopped these floors. What in heaven’s name were you doing out there?”
“I noticed the gutter on the corner of the garage was clogged, so I climbed up and pulled out a bunch of leaves. There’s still a lot more gunk in there, so I’ll need to come back and get the rest of it cleaned out.”
“Thank you,” Stella says gratefully, as he washes his hands. “But you don’t need to come back to do that. You already do so much around here. Henry’s supposed to stop by this week, so I’ll see if he can clean them out for me.”
Jon shrugs. “Yeah, well, I don’t mind. Let me know if he doesn’t.”
We follow her into the living room where plastic runners cover the high traffic areas of her carpet. She wants to show me pictures of her antique shop that she keeps in a photo album on the coffee table. I stop in front of a glass curio cabinet.
“Are those Hummels?” I ask, pointing to several dozen painted figurines on the top two shelves.
Stella’s eyes light up. “Yes! You’re familiar with them?”
“My grandmother used to collect them.”
Stella opens the glass door and starts to explain the history of a few of the pieces, where she bought them and how rare they are. I glance over at Jon, expecting to see him bored out of his mind, but he’s listening and nodding his head as if he’s just as interested as I am. He even asks her a few questions.