“I plead guilty,” Cal said, turning toward me.
I always felt he had a crush on me. One time we were joking about getting married. You should have seen the frightened look on Fin’s face. He needs Cal to bounce ideas off and a marriage would cut into his precious time.
“He thought you would return the favor, but I’ll look into the Ahlberg building,” Fin explained, opening the back door.
“Cal, I thank you. Have a good day my friends,” I said, closing the door behind them as they stepped outside onto my back porch.
I closed and locked the door and then turned to my watchful little dog, “Now, what was I doing? Oh yes, the suitcase,” I mumbled to myself as I retreated back to my bedroom.
Chapter 5
Last Details
By the time I had finished putting my clothes into my suitcase and removing them because I changed my mind, I noticed the time had slipped by to my dinnertime. I zipped my thirty-inch suitcase closed and set it close to the wall near the bathroom so I wouldn’t forget my toiletries in the morning. Trisha and her husband were driving me to the airport. She said they would arrive at five in the morning to pick me up because they wanted to get there early enough to check in their luggage. My suitcase was small enough to store in the overhead compartments of the airplane.
As I headed back toward the kitchen to locate something I could make for my meal, the phone on my kitchen wall rang.
“Hello? Oh, hello Eilene. Yes, sis, I’m all packed. How are you and your kids? Good. Oh, I already started eating dinner, but thanks for the offer. Yes, I’ll take lots of pictures. You too. Bye,” I said and hung up the receiver.
We used to be at odds for several years until Henry died. She took turns with Jan, my daughter, and Trisha to help me out. By Christmas, we had made amends. However, I still feel protective of my space. She means well but as I’m her younger sister, she does like to watch over me.
I checked out the refrigerator and pulled out the last of some leftovers I brought home from the Chinese restaurant in Blackfoot. Trisha and I like to drive to the larger town every once and a while to visit the thrift stores and stop at the café for lunch.
Mickie woke up from a sound sleep on his rumpled blanket bedding and popped up when I opened the refrigerator.
“Let’s see, I have some leftover hamburger I can let you have. No sense in letting it go to waste. My fridge is almost bare. I think I’ll just have these noodles in some soup,” I told him and took the cooked meat over to his bowl, crumbling it up. As soon as I set his dinner bowl on the floor, he couldn’t wait to gulp down the bits of hamburger.
“Gee, you act like it’s your last meal.”
I pulled out a can of chicken and rice soup, put half of the can into a bowl, and the other half into a container for the freezer. I set the bowl on a dinner plate for easy removal, and dumped the noodles into the soup and heated it up in the microwave.
Just as I was about to remove the noodle mix, the liquid began to wave up as if a breeze had blown on it. I stirred the soup around and the yellowish liquid settled down. “Maybe I heated it too much,” I thought as I pulled the plate and bowl out.
“How odd,” I said aloud.
Mickie trotted over to me.
“Stand back, I’m coming through,” I said and brought my soup over to my place setting at the table.
—-
After that tasty dinner, I put the dishes away in the washer, set the controls to wash, and decided to make some popcorn. I pulled out the jar of kernels I keep in the fridge and heated up one of my saucepans with a little olive oil. I could buy a new air popper but the last one didn’t pop a third of the corn. This works for me.
Soon the popping quit and I poured the expanded kernels into a large bowl where I salted them to taste. I wanted to watch a good movie downstairs tonight where I have the television in the main room before I leave tomorrow. Carrying the large bowl of popcorn and an orange soda, Mickie ran after me hoping I’d spill the popcorn on the way down, but I didn’t.
I set the bowl and the soda on the coffee table in front of the couch. We made ourselves comfortable on the sofa and I began flipping through the TV channels with the remote. A pair of eyes appeared in my peripheral corner of my right vision and it wasn’t my dog. A smaller rendition of my friend Hobnobby was standing beside my knee. Most people refer this fellow as an elf. However, in the Scandinavian folklore, he is called a nisse, winter protector of farm lands.
“Tiko, how did you get in here?” I asked not too surprised.
“I know you rather have me knock, but I heard you were going away,” the nisse squeaked in his high-pitched voice.
“I’m just going on vacation. I’ll be back in no time. So how is your world doing?”
“Better.”
“Sorry, Susan,” another voice said, coming from the spare bedroom my daughter uses on occasion.
“Hobs, how nice of you to drop in,” I said, implying a note of irritation.
“Tiko, you shouldn’t bother Susan in her home. She has privacy issues,” Hobnobby said. “By the way, I was in Blackfoot a few days ago–“
“Don’t start, Hobs. I can’t get involved in your drama. Deal with whatever you found by yourself,” I said, grabbing another handful of popcorn.
“But I found an abandoned building with a ghost and–“
“No, I intend to get away and relax,” I insisted.
“Are you trying to escape your fears or us?”
I
