Where You Least Expect It

He watched her carefully navigate the steps, thinking that if he knew what was good for them all, he would be long gone in ten.

Penelope closed the wood gate, its white paint worn off by time and weather, and released Maximus’s lead. Of course, the moment he was free, he plopped down at her feet, his tongue forever lolling as he gazed up at her.

She patted his head. “A Gemini. Definitely a Gemini.”

She heard pounding coming from inside the one-story house with the wide, slanting front porch and headed for the steps. She and her grandmother Mavis Moon had lived there alone since Penelope’s mother died when she was five. And seeing as neither one of them had much skill when it came to repairs, the house and surrounding yard needed a lot of them.

“Gram? I’m home,” she called out as the old screen door squeaked, then slapped shut behind her.

She heard mumbling coming from the dining room, then, “Of course you’re home. Where else would you be at this time of day? It’s five-thirty and you’re home. Shocker.”

Penelope put her bag of leftover raspberry biscuits in the kitchen and headed for the doorway to the dining room, puzzled by Mavis’s comments. “Did you say something?”

Her grandmother waved her away with the hammer she held. Slender, she looked almost too weak to wield such a heavy object. Especially given the flowing purple tunic that billowed around her petite frame like a circus tent.

Penelope slowly entered the room, her gaze riveted to the pictures of her mother Mavis had framed and positioned willy-nilly.

“What do you think?” Mavis asked, seeming to challenge her with her dark eyes.

“Um, it’s nice,” Penelope said though she was overwhelmed with images of her mother staring back at her from dozens of angles.

She stepped forward to straighten a crooked frame.

“Don’t touch that,” her grandmother said, seeming to threaten injury with the hammer if Penelope moved another inch. “Everything is exactly where I want it.”

“Okay,” Penelope said carefully. “I’ll, um, just go in and start dinner.”

Had the whole world gone nuts while she wasn’t looking? First Aidan had come into her shop looking at her like she was a desirable woman. Then Sheriff Parker had said Mr. Smythe had identified Aidan as the man who had robbed him. Then she’d returned home to find her normally tranquil grandmother pounding the heck out of the dining room wall, instead of relaxing in a yoga stance.

She looked around on the sparkling clean countertops of the kitchen, inside the empty oven, then in the refrigerator. Aside from a half-empty pitcher of lemonade, there wasn’t a crumb to be found.

Where was the ground turkey she had taken out of the freezer and put in the refrigerator to defrost this morning? The fresh salad fixings? Even her homemade yogurt was missing.

“I got rid of it all,” Mavis said, dropping the hammer onto the counter with a loud thud. “All of it. It was messing with my biorhythms.”

“What did you do with it?” Penelope asked.

“Threw it away, of course. All of it.”

Penelope caught herself absently rubbing her stomach where it growled. Biscuits aside, she hadn’t had a thing to eat all day and her body was letting her know about it.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched her grandmother approach the counter where she’d put the biscuits.

“Don’t you dare!” she said, taking the bag from the older woman. She rolled the top of the bag back up, put it on the table closer to her and propped her hand on her hip. “Did you stop taking your medication again?”

Her grandmother waved a bony hand. “Medication, shmedication. I threw it all out with the rest of it.”

Dread drifted through Penelope as she headed to check the rest of the house. As an afterthought, she returned to the table and snatched up the bag of biscuits, her dinner if she didn’t go out and pick anything else up.

Ten minutes later she’d verified her suspicions: Mavis had thrown away everything in the medicine cabinets, including her doctor-prescribed medications and toothpaste, as well as all the cleaners and detergents under the sink and in the broom closet.

Penelope stood dumbfounded, unable to make heads or tails out of the situation.

Well, at least she’d left the garden out back alone. The crooked rows of young vegetable plants were coming along nicely. In fact, it appeared Mavis had even weeded and watered them.

She made her way back into the dining room, where her grandmother was starting on the second wall.

“Have you eaten anything at all today?” she asked.

Mavis waved her hand. “Who needs food?”

“Last I checked? I don’t know. Maybe you?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Then, maybe I should call the hospital and ask them to hold a room for you, because that’s where you’ll be heading if you don’t eat something.” She glanced toward the living room. “Unless, of course, you’ve thrown the telephone out too?”

Mavis stared at her.

Penelope swallowed hard. “No, I’m not talking about the psychiatric ward.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Mavis climbed down off the stepladder and turned toward her. “Don’t you ever get sick of it all, Popi?”

It had been a long time since her grandmother had called her the pet name. Her doing so now opened up a soft spot inside Penelope. When she was young, she’d thought it meant something pope-like. Important. She’d found out later that it was merely a Greek shortening of her name.

“I mean, the sameness of everything? We get up at the same time every morning—”

“So, sleep in.”

“We eat dinner at the same time every night—”

“So, we’ll eat later.”

“We talk to the same people, do the same things—”

“So, we’ll go out and meet new people, do different things.”

Mavis looked a breath away from hitting her with the hammer again. “Can’t I even have a nervous breakdown without you being so damn calm about everything?”

Penelope smiled. “No.”

Her grandmother hit the wall with the hammer and Penelope jumped.

Mavis examined her handiwork. “I like it.”