I waved in agreement as I tucked my bike around the corner of the house and let myself in.

Aunt Sue was waiting for me at the kitchen table, wearing a powder blue polyester track suit. Her snowwhite hair was curled into tight ringlets against her scalp, and her watery blue eyes shone behind a pair of thick, wire-rimmed glasses. A plate full of steaming brown stuff sat in front of her.

“Hi, peanut, how was your day?” she asked.

“Fab. Mrs. Carmichael said you should turn down your music.” I crossed to an old eighties boom box playing Frank Sinatra. At top volume. Unlike Mrs. Carmichael, Aunt Sue had industrial-strength hearing aids. Which would have worked wonders if she ever wore them.

“Hattie Carmichael is on old fuddy duddy,” Aunt Sue protested.

“Amen. What’s that?” I gestured to her dinner.

“Meatloaf.”

I sniffed. It smelled like meatloaf. But it looked like dog crap. “It looks a little, um, runny.”

Aunt Sue glanced down at her plate as if seeing it for the first time. “Well, now, it does a bit, doesn’t it?”

“What did you put in it?” I crossed the galley kitchen to make sure the oven was, indeed, off.

She pursed her lips, pronounced wrinkles forming between her thin wisps of eyebrows. “Same things I always do.” She paused. “I think. It’s hard to remember. Maybe I forgot the bread crumbs.” She shrugged.

I pulled my “just in case” burrito out of my bag and set it on a plate for her.

“What’s this?” she asked, her eyes shining like I’d placed a Christmas present in front of her.

“Beefy bean and cheese.”

“Hot sauce?”

I dropped a couple packets of Del Scorcho on the table next to her.

“You are the best niece I ever had,” Aunt Sue said, digging in.

“I’m your only niece.” I grabbed her plate of runny meatloaf and gave it a proper burial in the garbage disposal.

“That’s beside the point.”

“Thanks. You’re my favorite, too.” I dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“Mmm,” she said, making little yummy sounds. “Why is it that the worse a food is for you, the better it tastes?”

“Burritos aren’t that bad,” I countered.

“Come on now, all that fast-food stuff is terrible. Full of preservatives and cholesterol. That stuff will kill you. Clogs your arteries, you know. Millie Sanders said her cousin ate that McDonald’s stuff every morning, and he dropped dead of a heart attack just last week. He was only seventy-three!”

“Well, then it looks like I’ve got a few good years of drive-thrus ahead of me before I have to start worrying about it.” I gave her a wink.

“Got any more hot sauce?” Aunt Sue asked around a huge bite.

I dropped a couple more packets on the table.

“You eat already?” she asked.

I nodded.

Her shoulders sagged. “Darn. Because I made meatloaf.”