church.
The horse kid was galloping through the house in her Sunday School dress. She stopped galloping when she saw me and her face grew thoughtful. “Have you found Annie yet?”
“No,” I said. “But I talked to her mom on the phone.”
“Next time you talk to her mom you should tell her Annie’s missing stuff at school. Tell her I got put in the Black Stallion reading group.”
“You’re telling another whopper,” Grandma said. “You’re in the Blue Bird reading group.”
“I don’t want to be a blue bird,” Annie said. “Blue birds are poopy. I want to be a black stallion.” And she galloped away.
“I love that kid,” I said to Grandma.
“Yep,” Grandma said. “She reminds me a lot of you when you were that age. Good imagination. It comes from my side of the family. Except it skipped a generation with your mother. Your mother and Valerie and Angie are blue birds through and through.”
I helped myself to a doughnut and poured out a cup of coffee.
“You look different,” Grandma said to me. “I can’t put my finger on it. And you’ve been smiling ever since you walked in.”
Damn Ranger. I noticed the smile when I brushed my teeth. It wouldn’t go away!
“Amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for you,” I said to Grandma.
“I wouldn’t mind having a smile like that,” Grandma said.
Valerie came to the table, looking morose. “I don’t know what to do about Albert,” she said.
“Not got a two-bathroom house?”
“He lives with his mother, and he has less money than I do.”
No surprises there. “Good men are hard to find,” I said. “And when you find them, there’s always something wrong with them.”
Valerie looked in the doughnut bag. “It’s empty. Where’s my doughnut?”
“Stephanie ate it,” Grandma said.
“I only had one!”
“Oh,” Grandma said, “then maybe it was me. I had three.”
“We need more doughnuts,” Valerie said. “I have to have a doughnut.”
I grabbed my bag and hiked it onto my shoulder. “I’ll get more. I could use another one, too.”
“I’ll go with you,” Grandma said. “I want to ride in your shiny black car. I don’t suppose you’d let me drive?”
My mother was at the stove. “Don’t you
We went to Tasty Pastry on Hamilton. I worked there when I was in high school. Gave away my virginity there, too. Behind the eclair case, after-hours, with Morelli. I’m not sure how it happened. One minute I was selling him a cannoli and next thing I knew I was on the floor with my pants down. Morelli’s always been good at talking the pants off women.
I parked in the small lot on the side of Tasty Pastry. The after-church rush was over, and the lot was empty. There were seven parking slots that went nose in to the red brick wall of the bakery, and I parked square in the middle slot.
Grandma and I went into the bakery and picked out another dozen doughnuts. Probably overkill, but better to have too many than to be doughnut deprived. We came out of the bakery, and we were approaching Ranger’s CR-V when a green Ford Explorer careened into the lot and came to a screeching halt next to us. The driver had a rubber Clinton mask over his face, and the passenger seat was occupied by the rabbit. My heart went
