“Sure,” I said. “Either that or maybe I can feed my animals, and you can feed yours.”

Chapter Nineteen

The kitchen door swung open, saving me from whatever John was about to say.

My sister Carol never knocks. She doesn’t say hi or how’s it going either. She just starts talking while she walks right into the house, as if she’s simply picking up where she left off last time.

This time around she was also shaking a copy of The Marshbury Mirror, the local weekly newspaper.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said. She unhooked her reading glasses from the front of her jacket and put them on, opened the newspaper, refolded it. “All that time we spent getting Dad up to speed online, and now he’s backsliding. This paper doesn’t even have a dating section anymore, so his ad’s in the For Sale section, right between an ad for a mostly intact outdoor nativity scene with everything but the baby Jesus, and one for a litter of purebred Great Dames.”

“Dad would be all over that one,” I said. “He’s a huge fan of dames, great and otherwise.”

“Listen to this,” my big sister said. “Free mattress to good home. Must have references. Former owner, a charming gentleman of a certain age who loves dogs, moonlit strolls, and long meandering bicycle rides, to visit occasionally.”

I shook my head, took a moment to be thankful that my father wasn’t hitting on Polly. Not exclusively anyway. “Well, at least he’s keeping himself busy. That’s important at his age, you know. You rest, you rust and all that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Carol said. “You probably wouldn’t even notice it online, but that ad is local. And in print. It makes Dad sound like some kind of pervert.”

“Did I hear dessert?” our father said as the kitchen door swung open again. “Sure, I’ll have some. You kiddos know I’m not one to turn down any kind of dessert.”

John finished filling the animal dishes, headed off in the direction of the cat room.

I took a casserole out of the freezer, put it in the oven. With all the upheaval around here, we weren’t exactly going for nightly sit-down dinners with candles and cloth napkins, especially since John’s and my clothes had completely taken over the dining room table.

One of us would stick a casserole in the oven, and everybody would scoop some out when they were hungry. Sometimes people sat at the kitchen table to eat it. Sometimes they took their food to their rooms. The last person to eat would put the leftovers in the fridge.

“Have a seat, Dad,” Carol said.

Our dad grabbed his chair at the head of the kitchen table, turned it around and straddled it. “Long day in the ice cream truck. Be a good girl, Christine, and—”

“Carol,” my big sister said.