Page 25 of Renard's Deliverance

Mrs. Grackle stood there, scowling at her.

Her name wasn’t really Mrs. Grackle, it was Gingers. However, Opal thought she acted like a darn grackle. Always squawking about everything. She was the most annoying neighbor and there was nothing she loved more than to look down her nose at people.

Well, at Opal.

She’d made it very clear that she did not approve of Opal moving into the house across the road from hers.

Opal was used to people giving her weird looks. She knew she wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that was fine with her.

But it would be great if people could refrain from knocking on her door at ten on a Saturday morning just to look at her rudely.

Hmm. Could the Grackle have had something to do with her broken security light?

Nah. She was a pain in the butt, but she wouldn’t break other people’s stuff.

Although that reminded Opal that she needed to check the light today.

“Listen, lady, you knocked on my door and woke me up. Want me to be fully dressed? Come at a decent hour.” She glanced down at her silky pajama set. It was an oatmeal color with lace at her chest and on the sides of her thighs.

She thought she looked damn hot.

“It’s ten in the morning and some of us have been up for hours,” the older woman huffed.

“Yes, but some of us didn’t go to bed before the sun set.”

“No, I am well aware of that,” Mrs. Grackle replied, grasping her faux-leather brown handbag to her chest. She was wearing a brown blazer and brown skirt that finished part way down her calves.

She kind of looked like a giant poo.

But Opal was too classy to tell her that.

“Getting home at all hours, making lots of noise. This neighborhood used to be a quiet, respectable one.”

“That’s not what I heard,” she said. “I heard that Mrs. Easton liked to put on a good party.”

“Agnes was very social,” she said in a strange voice.

For a moment, Opal thought she appeared sad. Did she miss Mrs. Easton? Was that why she was being so rude to Opal? But why not just go visit her? Why torture Opal with early morning wakeups?

“Is there something you wanted, Mrs. Gingers?”

“Yes, to ask that you please be quieter at night. You woke me and Barney up and it took us forever to get to sleep again.”

Barney was her nephew who often visited her on the weekends. Why, Opal had no idea. Staying with the Grackle couldn’t be that much fun.

“Look, I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll try to be quieter.” Although she really didn’t think she’d been that loud in the first place. She shut the door and turned away.

Grumbling to herself, she headed toward her coffee pot to switch it on. She hadn’t gotten to sleep until around four a.m. Her brain had been too busy.

Opal wasn’t a great sleeper.

Mostly because she kept getting woken by fucking nightmares. And partially, because she always felt like she was on guard, waiting for something to happen.

So when a nightmare woke her at around three this morning, she’d decided to try removing some of the carpet in the spare bedroom instead of trying to get back to sleep.

Which had meant moving all the bedroom furniture out. Something that had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was now regretting it as her body screamed in pain.

That bed had been really heavy and she hoped she hadn’t kept any of her other neighbors up. Not that Mrs. Grackle could have heard her from across the road.

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