Page 59 of Look on the Bright Side

“It’s Dante, Noni, and here you go.” He lowered a massive turkey leg to Noni’s mouth, and she took an impressive bite without using her hands. Dentures were in, then.

“How’s it going, Doc?” Dante said. His dark eyes met hers, and there it was again, that weird, unpleasantly electric jolt and residual, slightly sick feeling. What was that about?

“Hi, Dante.” She had already said hi, hadn’t she? “How are you?”

“Doing great.” He smiled, and Lark felt her knees tingle. He was perfectly nice and appropriate, so why the ominous feeling? He held the turkey leg to his grandmother’s mouth, and again, Noni took a shockingly large bite. She seemed pretty hale for someone on hospice. Then again, you really couldn’t predict how long a person had. That was one of the first lessons Darlene had taught her.

“Looks like she’s eating a baby’s leg, doesn’t it?” he murmured. “She’s got the personality for it.”

Lark sputtered out a laugh.

“Lorenzo, gimme drink.” Dante raised an eyebrow at Lark, then held a paper cup for Noni and adjusted the straw.

“My grandfather always messes up our names, too,” Lark said.

“Noni here pretty much only remembers Lorenzo,” he returned easily. “If he’s not around, we just step in and hope she doesn’t smack us.” Another smile, another flood of warmth and that ominous warning buzz in her joints.

She didn’t have time to dwell on Dante, fortunately, because Izzy grabbed her arm and led her closer to the stage. “This is actually supercool, so you don’t want to miss it,” she said. “By the way, no need to win Noni over. I’ve been trying my whole life. She’s only interested in Lorenzo.”

“How’s her health these days?” Lark asked.

“Oh, she’s circling the drain,” Izzy answered. “Sleeps for, like, twenty hours a day, can’t do any activities of daily living anymore, isn’t eating that much. Aside from turkey legs, apparently. I’ll be seeing that on the flip side.” She pulled a face. “Being the nurse, I get to do all the fun stuff.”

“I can help,” Lark said. “I used to be a CNA. Worked in a nursing home for a couple of years before med school.”

“Seriously, you’re so nice, I have no idea what you’re doing with Lorenzo.”

“Shh,” Sofia said, turning with a smile to her sister. “They’re getting started.”

Indeed, Henry’s mother was just coming out, dressed in a flowing red gown with gold trim. Lark glanced at the sign on the stage—Mistress Jocelyn, Master Falconer. Now, that was a cool title.

“Do you want to meet a falcon?” Jocelyn asked.

“Yes!” chorused the crowd of about fifty. Henry opened a large cage and brought out a beautiful white and gray bird, who gripped Jocelyn’s arm with its bright yellow talons. “This is Otto, a gyrfalcon,” Jocelyn said. “He was injured by another bird as a baby, and since he recovered and grew up in captivity, he’s not suited to life in the wild just yet. At our home, he flies freely, but every night, he comes home for dinner.”

Jocelyn ran a raptor recovery center, she told the crowd, and was against keeping raptors as pets, but said that humans and raptors had a long history together. She educated the crowd on how the birds were revered in medieval times for their ability to hunt and acted in partnership with their keepers, catching rabbits and smaller birds for their humans to eat. Their eyesight was so good they could see a rabbit a mile away, and they could fly at speeds up to seventy miles per hour when chasing prey.

“As I said, Otto is a gyrfalcon, the largest species. He looks pretty big, don’t you think?” she asked the crowd. “How much do you think he weighs?”

“Eight pounds?” someone suggested.

“Ten?”

“Fourteen?”

“He weighs two pounds, nine ounces,” Jocelyn said, and Lark said, “Wow!” along with the rest of the crowd. “But he can bring down prey that weighs up to eight pounds, because he strikes so fast. So everyone here with a purse dog, you have been warned!”

Everyone laughed, and a couple of dogs were scooped up into their owners’ arms, making Lark glad Connery was home.

“I’m so excited for this, I might pass out,” Dante said, appearing next to his sisters. “If I do, you’re in charge of Noni, Isabella.”

“Absolutely not. It’s your turn today. Where is she, by the way? Still alive?”

“Over there, and maybe,” Dante said. “I thought the heat might be too much for her, so I parked her under that tree. Don’t worry, I’m checking every thirty seconds to make sure she’s not kidnapped. She ate that turkey leg like a starving wolf, and the tryptophan did its job. She’s snoring away. Or at the gates of paradise. Hard to say.”

“We should be so lucky,” Sofia murmured, and Izzy snorted.

“Lark, we’re not really this awful,” Sofia said. “We do love Noni, more or less.”

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