Page 54 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
Molly could picture the roof, though she hadn’t taken much notice of it, or any of the neighboring farms. She nodded politely, glancing at her cart. She still needed to get bread, butter, cheese, and eggs—to get them by before the layers started producing.
“It’s a shame,” Gladys sighed. Her sweater was too hot for the summer day, as it hung to the back of her tiny knees. “All these years, all this history. Kilbourn was such a lovely farming community, and now no one seems to want community. It’s each to his own. People think they can find fulfilling relationships online.Online. That wasn’t even a thing when I was your age.” Gladys patted Molly’s hand again. “Well, dear, here I am chattering your ear off, but you’re probably one of those who like to be alone.”
She was, but she felt rude nodding.
“I think—” Gladys was interrupted by a flurry of footsteps behind them and the rough wheeling of a grocery cart in their direction.
The wheels of the new cart almost banged into Molly’s heels.
“Hey!” She jumped to the side.
Gladys had straightened her barely five-foot frame, surprise written in the creases of her face.
“We need to talk,” Gemma Rabine announced, looking every bit the older sister on a mission of justice. “Please.” The polite additive came a bit too late.
Molly hadn’t seen Gemma—or Tiffany or Brandon, January’s parents—since the evening she’d blacked out. Molly assumed they’d either been in communication with Trent or simply had resumed the distance between cousins since none of them were close. What Gemma and she needed to talk about so urgently was a mystery.
Gladys edged her way between the end of Gemma’s cart and Molly, as if her petite and aged frame were some sort of armor.
“In my day, we greeted one another with a polite ‘How do you do?’” Gladys’s reprimand seemed to bounce off Gemma, who was obviously preoccupied with her mission and not particularly glowing with friendliness. Molly noted that the nurse’s eyes darted to her skinned knee and then back to her face. So, Gemma wasn’t totally uncaring, but for the moment, she was definitely erring on the assertive side rather than the caregiving nurse-like side she’d offered Molly the other night.
“I was going to call you as soon as I was finished here.” Gemma’s statement glossed over Gladys and landed squarely on Molly. She held up a bottle of headache-relief medication. “For my mom.” Her words were supposed to make a point, Molly could tell. She just wasn’t sure what the point was. Gemma dropped the boxed medication into the cart and picked up another one. “Also for Mom.” A box of acetaminophen with sleep aid rattled. “And I have to stop at the pharmacy for her scripts. My sister isdeadand everyone is going about their business like nothing’s happened!”
Molly glanced around at the other customers in the aisle as Gemma’s voice rose. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t you apologize.” Gladys held up a palm toward Molly and with a sharp look communicated to her to be silent. “You shouldn’t be assaulted while buying your beans.”
“And yet my sister can be assaulted and left in a ditch?” Gemma’s high-pitched question silenced even the music on the grocery store speakers. At least it seemed to. Everything in the store grew curiously quiet. Gemma gripped her shopping cart, emotions ranging from anger to hurt to panic splaying across her face. “Please, Molly. You and Trent have to knowsomething.”
“I don’t know anything.” Molly found her voice.
Gemma tilted her head in disbelief.
“I think you’re right.” Molly lowered her voice to bring an element of calm to the situation before security was called. “We need to talk. But not here.”
“Not here is right,” Gemma spat.
“Not without me,” Gladys inserted.
“Who are you?” Gemma eyed the elderly woman.
Molly, for reasons she couldn’t explain even to herself, put her hand on Gladys’s shoulder. “She’s my friend.”
“Fine. Bring her.” Gemma waved them both off. “My grandpa’s house. In an hour.”
Molly shook her head. “The coffee shop. Pickles’ Place.” She had no intention of traveling a half hour out of her way to be confronted on Gemma’s territory in her grandfather’s—Trent’s uncle Roger’s—home. Not that Gemma was a danger, but a conversation could turn intense, and Molly wasn’t sure she was up for being alone.
A warm hand with papery soft skin reached for hers. She looked down into Gladys’s eyes.
“Don’t you worry, dear. Families have tiffs all the time. I’ll be with you, and we’ll settle this.” She ended her proclamation with a squeeze of the hand.
Molly regretted claiming the elderly woman as hers. She’d invited a stranger into her life with no hesitation,and yet she wouldn’t visit Uncle Roger’s home and he was family.
A family tiff?
Molly wondered how Gladys would feel once she realized theirs involved a brutal murder.
18
