“Patricia, dear, come here.”

“Be right back,” I tell Oscar.

“Squawk like a bird if you need rescuing,” he mutters.

I wave a hand in his face to shut him up.

“I’ve got a favor to ask you,” says Miss Flora Mae as she ducks into her garage.

There goes my afternoon of TV and groaning about homework. Mom and Dad would kill me if they knew I said no to our lifelong neighbor during her time of need. At least that’s one thing they can still agree on.

My eyes adjust to the darkness of the garage as I walk out of the sunlight to find Miss Flora Mae packing her black Cadillac to the gills. “Whoa! Are you going somewhere?”

To be totally honest, Miss Flora Mae leaves her house so rarely that I forgot what kind of car she even had. Even her groceries are delivered to her. Not with some fancy app or anything, like Aunt Cheryl has in Phoenix, but Green’s Grocers does home delivery for senior citizens and people who have trouble leaving their house. Mom says it’s that kind of watch-out-for-your-neighbor attitude that she likes about Valentine.

She shakes her head and removes her sunglasses. I notice for the first time how long and smooth her white hair is, parted at the center of her head. “My baby sister, Gloria, has fallen ill.” She turns to me. “No matter how old we get she’ll always be the baby, so I’m gonna head off to take care of her for the next few weeks.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister” is all I manage to blurt out. This lady is one giant mystery, but for some reason the thing that shocks me most is that she has any family at all.

She shrugs, tossing an old toolbox into her back seat and then throwing a quilt in after that. The car is full of odds and ends—definitely not the kind of stuff I’d take with me on a road trip to see family. Though the last time we visited Aunt Cheryl, I somehow thought I needed to bring the encyclopedia set Dad got me for Christmas, Mom’s old cell phone that she’d passed down to me (not connected, for the record), and three whoopee cushions. Just in case. It was the first time Mom let me pack myself for a trip. (I have to be totally honest and admit that I forgot to pack any underwear. I knew I was forgetting something.)

“Well,” she says, “we don’t like each other much, but we are cursed to love each other.”

I almost gasp. I can’t believe she’d have the guts to say something like that out loud—especially to me. Adults are never that honest with kids—but maybe that’s what happens when you get old. I’ve got to say, though, something about the way Miss Flora Mae says things really makes stuff click for me sometimes. Because the way she feels about her sister is pretty much how I’m feeling about my parents right about now: 150 percent cursed.