"Go on," Jane said.
"Well, Mom, I finally got fed up and was so embarrassed at being with her that I told her not to be so rude and mean and loud."
"How'd she take that?" Jane asked.
He took one more fruitless sip of the melting ice in his cup and said, "She said she was so disappointed in me speaking to her that way, but since you raised me, she wasn't at all surprised that I'd learned to dislike old people. I'm sorry, but you asked me."
"It explains a lot of things, Todd. First, why she never took you on another trip."
"I wouldn't have gone if she'd invited me," he said. "Not after the way she was nasty about you. It's awful to talk ugly to strangers, but worse to talk ugly about a guy's
mom."
She gave him an affectionate fist thump on his shoulder. "Now it's my turn,"Jane said. "She's been very nasty to me, too, recently. She hired a detective to follow me everywhere I went alone or with Mrs. Nowack. She wanted to know how we were dressed and how long we were gone, and if he could tell what we were eating or buying."
"That's horrible, Mom!"
"She's done worse things. At dinner with Uncle Ted and Aunt Dixie she called their little girls `Chinks' and made Aunt Dixie cry all night."
" `Chinks'? What's that mean?"
"It's a nasty word for anybody Chinese. Just like calling a black person the N word."
"I know what the N word is. In sixth grade a new girl who was black started the year in my class and a boy called her that. The teacher took him to the principal and they called his parents to take him home for the rest of the week. He never came back. I think his folks thought it was okay to say the N word and put him in another school. I see what you mean. Poor Aunt Dixie and Uncle Ted. Did Mary and Sarah understand it?"
"No. They are too young to know a word like that. And Uncle Ted and Aunt Dixie aren't ever going to let your grandmother be around them again."
"Good for them!"
"That's why Mel and I aren't inviting her to either of the wedding services. And be sure if she asks you when and where they are going to be, you must pretend you don't know or have forgotten."
"I won't. I promise. It's sorta sad. When I was a little kid, she was a nice Grandma. She isn't even a nice person anymore."
"Todd, my dear son, sometimes old ladies turn mean. If I do, promise you'll stash me away somewhere."
He put down his cup on the floor of the Jeep and turned and gave her a big hug. "You'll never turn mean. You're the nicest mom anybody could have. Could we go home now? I'm stuffed and need to figure out something about my computer."
"What's that?"
"It's going weird and doing tabs wrong. Maybe it's also turning into an icky old woman."
Both of them laughed.
Chapter
FOURTEEN
J
ane was once again sitting outside, in spite of the fact that every day became a little hotter as spring was getting ready to turn into full-blown summer weather. She was thinking about the talk with Todd earlier in the day. She hadn't especially wondered why Thelma hadn't taken Todd on her usual summer vacation for the last two years. If she had, she would have assumed Thelma simply thought she was getting too old to travel. Or that Todd was getting too old to go on trips with a grandmother.
No. That wouldn't play. Thelma wouldn't have thought about anyone but herself. So chalk it up to age.
All in all, it had been a good conversation and cleared up a lot of things. It allowed her to tattle to Todd aboutwhat his grandmother had said and tried to do to her in the last week without feeling guilty and whiny.
There was something else at the back of her mind that she'd been trying to grasp all day that finally emerged. It involved the next book she was writing. And the case of Miss Welbourne's death. But in reverse, so to speak.
A woman who had been in an accident and had already set up a trust for her children with a secondary trustee who was her cousin. How did she have enough money to do this, though? She had to be a widow and she'd inherited a lot of money from her deceased husband. She also had to keep her own substantial inheritance from her own parents.
The whole setup had to be convincing. How old were the children when her accident happened? How had it occurred? It was necessary for her to be in a near coma for a long enough time to justify that the cousin could take over managing the trust. And worse, how could she convince the reader that a woman could come out of a coma and remember her whole past?
Jane would have to start in her heroine's mind. Alert and intelligent as ever, but unable to speak or indicate (except from her eyes following someone in the room?) that her mind was still working.
Furthermore, her characters in her first two books, had elaborate and long names. This time she needed a down-home plain name. It couldn't be anything that started with a J, however. People who didn't know Jane well often
called her Janet, or Jean, or Joyce. She didn't want readers to mix up her real name with the character's name.
Martha? No, that was her sister Marty's real name and she couldn't love and sympathize with a Martha.
Ruth? Too biblical. Sarah? Also biblical, but a nice name. How about spelling it Sara? That would work. She'd known two Sarahs along the way through the many schools she'd gone to during her childhood who were called Sally by their friends. Sally was a more "affectionate" name. At least as far as Jane was concerned.
She hadn't brought her legal pad out to jot down notes, so she ran inside for one, refreshed her iced tea, fetched a pencil, and went back to the patio table. The workers weren't making as much noise as they had in the early stages of the room addition. There was the occasional sound of a nail gun, or a request for another roll of the insulation they were putting in between the studs. They'd also learned to leave her alone. The Porta Potty, or whatever it was called, was on the far side of her house so none of them had to come into her house.
She supposed they thought of her as a weird writer who sat outside handwriting books. She wasn't writing a book, though. She was thinking out possibilities. Later she'd line all them up in no particular order on a file in her computer and soon begin to write the book.
She still needed a time setting. When did people begin the legal business of setting up trusts? She'd need to research that. She'd heard of trustbusters in history, long ago. The railroad barons used trusts, she suspected.
But those were big companies, not individuals. And it was probably before women could even vote. She'd let Sally settle it with a will instead.
And where would the story be set?
She found herself wanting to start the book, without worrying about chronology or legal matters. She went inside and sat down at her computer to write the first chapter.
Sally had her eyes closed and was thinking, "I've been in this bed in the hospital for a year and one week. It's good that I had the sense not to let anyone know I could hear and see. Even though that was all I could do. Thank God for Lacy."
Lacy had, after the first week that Sally was hospitalized, taken on responsibility for her. Lacy was young, tall, and strong and was the only one in the world who believed that Sally could recover. Three times every day she propped Sally up on pillows and hand fed her water and pulverized food. She'd also lift her carefully to the commode in the corner of the room when Sally needed it.