Page 7 of Sneak Attack

Marley’s raspy voice rattled from her bedroom downstairs, forcing me to roll out of bed.

Sounds of movement in the kitchen had me moving faster. After I finally dragged myself to her door yesterday like a puppy with its tail between its legs, ashamed I’d almost left her, we sat and caught up. It didn’t take long before she started yawning. She’d claimed she wasn’t tired, but I’d taken over cooking a quick dinner using the ingredients in her stocked fridge before she went to bed.

She’d slept all night.

I woke up feeling like I’d run a marathon in my sleep.

Sliding into my fuzzy white slippers, I grabbed the lightweight gray robe from the back of my door and hurried down the stairs. Marley said she could get dizzy easily, especially before she’d eaten.

The last thing she should be doing was standing on her feet, cooking breakfast over her ancient gas stove.

“I’ve got breakfast, Marley!” I called out before I reached the bottom of the stairs.

Besides, with her memory failing so quickly she was just as likely to use a cup of sugar instead of flour in the pancakes.

I found her in the kitchen, filling the coffeepot, and for the hundredth time since I walked into her house, I was transported back to a better time—where things never changed, including the crocheted doilies draped over her dark purple couch or the rainbow-colored braided rug that covered her seventies linoleum chipped floor. For certain, if I were to pull up the rug I’d find the missing square in the middle of the kitchen floor, cut up after Cole once dropped a bowl of pickled beets on the floor. No amount of scrubbing with bleach had been able to remove the blood-colored stain.

“Sit. Sit.” I guided her to one of the kitchen chairs, dark walnut wood with red and gold striped chair cushions tied to the seats.

“I’ve been making coffee every morning longer than you’ve been alive, you know.”

“And the doctors said you have to stay off your feet as much as possible which is why I’m here, right?”

A liver-spotted andcoldhand that seemed to have aged thirty years and not seven patted my hand.

“Yes, yes. I know that. Hard to accept some days, is all.”

“Well, now you have me.” I squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head, full of gray hair and curled in a way I knew someone had to be taking her to the salon for her weekly blowout.

Who had stocked her fridge, kept her yard mowed, and the house cleaned was a question I wasn’t going to ask.

Cole’s parents probably, if they still lived next door. Or even Cole himself.

It didn’t even have to be him. Half the town of Marysville would stumble over each other to help a woman who had helped so many.

There’d be hundreds to step up and help, but Cole would have been first in line, his parents right behind him, especially during his off-season.

“I saw some bacon in the fridge last night,” I told her as I headed toward the coffeepot. It was faded, more yellow than white and was almost as old as me. It didn’t have any of the bells and whistles, like a clock or timer function, anything built in the last fifteen years had. “Do you want some eggs and bacon for breakfast? Toast?”

She coughed, the sound rattling in her chest and reached for a tissue in the center of the table. Boxes of them were now everywhere in her home, always within reaching distance.

I paused while she coughed again and cleared her throat.

“Maybe just some toast this morning. And then you and I can chat.”

I tried to think of a hundred ways to avoid this conversation, but I didn’t have anything else to do except to sit and talk with her.

“I’m making bacon and eggs for me then,” I muttered and turned to her fridge. It was newer. White with a side-by-side refrigerator and freezer that replaced her old yellow one we always teased her about.

“Can’t avoid me forever, Eden. Not when you’re standing in my kitchen.”

“I know.”

But I’d sure as hell try for as long as I could.

* * *

After breakfast, Marley and I headed out to the backyard. She looped her hand through my arm and told me to take a walk with her. I figured my reckoning was coming, but instead, she stayed quiet as we strolled through the path between her trees to the lake out past her acreage.

---