She turned to my cousin. “I don’t like being left with the chores, Matt.”
“What chores, Grandmother?” he asked, then leaned down from the waist in a runner’s stretch.
He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, which showed off the muscled body of a guy who worked out often. Stop looking, Megan, I told myself.
“You live here,” Grandmother answered him sharply. “You know what has to be done.”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice patient, “but what exactly did you need done?”
“My car has to be washed.”
“I did it Thursday afternoon, remember?”
“The house gutters must be cleaned.”
“I’ve done most of that. I’ll finish up after the football game this afternoon.”
“There is raking.”
“It would make more sense in another week.”
“Is there something I can do?” I asked.
Matt gave me a cool look. I mirrored it, then saw the spark in Grandmother’s eye. She enjoyed the fact that we didn’t get along.
“I can handle things,” he told me.
What was his problem? Did he think I was competing for brownie points? He seemed too sure of himself to worry about being anything less than “number one” with her. And even if some of that confidence was an act, he knew how Grandmother felt about adopted children.
As irritated as I was with Matt, I was even more annoyed with myself for continuing to give him chances to be rude.
But something defiant in me, something that refused to believe this was the genuine Matt, kept trying.
“Are you going for a run?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Can I go with you?”
He picked up a plastic bottle from the kitchen counter and twisted off the top. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m doing serious running.”
I prickled. “Meaning you don’t think I can keep up with you?”
“Maybe you can,” he said with a shrug, then took a vitamin.
“Then why not? In twenty-five words or more,” I added, tired of his short answers.
He gazed at me with dark brown eyes. “I work hard yearround to keep in shape for lacrosse. I run crosscountry, not little loops around a track.”
“At home my dad and I do trails through the Catalinas,” I told him. “They’re low mountains, but next to the Eastern Shore, they look like the Rockies.”
He nodded, unimpressed, then opened a different bottle and took another vitamin.
“Tell me,” I said, “what kind of supplement do you take to grow an attitude like yours?”
A crack of a smile, just a crack. Then he pushed both bottles toward me. “Help yourself, though I think your attitude’s developed enough.”
I glanced at the bottles, which contained ordinary vitamins, then sat down at the kitchen table to drink my juice.
I wished I had a newspaper to read, something to page through casually while waiting for him to leave. I grabbed a cereal box and studied that until I heard the screen door bang shut. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grandmother mark a page in her Bible, then put it on a shelf by the window.
She returned to the table, resting her hands on the back of a chair. “You’re not at all like your mother.”
I glanced up, surprised. What an odd comment from someone who never forgot I wasn’t related by birth! “Did you expect me to be?”
“Children learn from the person with whom they live. Even as a teenager, your mother was always sweet- natured and gentle with people. She never had a harsh comment for anyone.”
“Still doesn’t,” I said, setting aside the cereal box.
“So where did you get that sharp tongue?” Grandmother asked.
I sighed and stood up. “Don’t know. Where did your child get her gentleness?”
I went for a run by myself that morning, following Scarborough Road away from town, passing field after field of harvested corn. I knew better than to expect an invitation to the football game that afternoon. After a long shower and a quick brunch, I asked Grandmother if she wanted to do some shopping in town. She informed me that she only mixed with “the riffraff” when absolutely necessary.
“I shall tell Matt to drop you off,” she added.
“Thanks, but I can get there myself.”
I figured it was only a twenty-minute walk to the stores on High Street, and I was too proud to accept any ride she had commanded.
In the early afternoon I crossed the bridge over Wist Creek. When I turned onto High Street, I saw a sign advertising “Sidewalk Saturday.” About four blocks from the harbor, the shopping district turned into one long sale.
Paperbacks were piled in wheelbarrows by the steps of Urspruch’s Books. Mobiles and wind chimes dangled from the sycamore tree in front of Faye’s Gallery. Teague’s Antiques had transformed its patch of bricks into a Victorian parlor with chairs and a sofa. Groups of people strolled in and out of the small shops, some of the crowd walking in the street. Cars crept along, apparently used to this weekend style of life.
When I arrived at Yesterdaze, Ginny barely had time to say hello. Her shop clerk had gone home ill, which left Ginny trying to guide shoppers and cover the register.
“Want some help?” I asked. “I work at Dad’s animal hospital. I know how to count change and do credit card purchases.”
“Oh, honey, it’s your vacation.”
“But I’d like to,” I told her. “Matt doesn’t want to hang out with me. Grandmother doesn’t want to hang out with anyone.
This would give me something to do.”
Ginny played with the amber beads around her neck.
“Well, I could sure use a hand,” she admitted, her eyes darting after a customer. “You’re on.”
Wearing a work apron embroidered with the shop’s name, armed with credit forms and a money box, I took my place at a table outside. I bagged and boxed. I read price tags and squinted at driver’s licenses, copying their numbers onto checks. Some customers were locals, but more were visitors, many from Baltimore and Philadelphia. I enjoyed watching the parade of people and listening to the conversations around me. I learned that shoppers are not as easy to deal with as dogs and cats.
A senior citizen with salon-molded hair argued with Ginny for selling a jacket she had asked Ginny to hold over two months ago. Her nurse companion, a heavyset woman, forty-something, picked through the lace handkerchiefs on the table next to me. “She’ll go on like this for another five minutes,” said the aide. “Maybe ten. We’ve argued our way down two blocks of High Street. Always do.”
“Sounds like you don’t have an easy job,” I replied sympathetically.
She shrugged. “Easier than the last one. Pay’s better too.
Mrs. Barnes thinks it’s still 1950.”
I looked up from the roll of quarters I had just cracked open. “Mrs. Barnes?”
“Out Scarborough House.” The woman kept wrinkling her nose and sniffling, while looking at the elegant handkerchiefs. I was afraid she was going to use one.
“Guess you’re not from these parts,” she said.
“I, uh, just arrived.”
“Well, let me put it this way. Mrs. Barnes makes ner”-she gestured toward the older woman-“seem like a saint to live with. As for that spooky old house on the Wist, where she’ll let you board ’cause she’s paying you
