“I brought chocolate doughnuts!” she announced happily.

I couldn’t help but give her a smile. “I’ll put on some coffee.”

After starting a fresh pot, I joined the friendly neighborhood cat lady at the kitchen table.

“Oh, to have been a fly on your wall last night!” she declared, scarfing down her second doughnut. “So tell me everything! What happened with your momma?”

“Angie!” I corrected her. “As far as I’m concerned, she lost the right for me to call her momma when she took off with that trucker almost three years ago!”

“Well, what happened with Angie then?”

“I can’t believe her nerve,” I began as I pinched off a piece of a doughnut. “That woman actually thought she could march back into our lives after all this time and reclaim Hank as her husband, me as her son, and this house as her own!”

“She ain’t staying here is she?” Ms. Woaweesa gasped.

“No,” I replied. “I put my foot down about that. Hank put her up at the Red Roof Inn for a couple of nights. She claims to be homeless, but that’s nothing new. My husband also gave her fifty dollars for food, but it probably went straight toward booze or drugs. Hell, I wouldn’t have even done that much for her.”

The older woman shook her head. “Hank has a huge heart.”

“I know,” I conceded with a brief smile. “And Angie knows that too! I just know that she’s gonna try to use Hank’s kind nature to her advantage.”

“You really think she will?”

“Oh, I know she will! I watched that woman work her wiles on too many uncles for too many years. She has an agenda! I’m sure of it.”

“Did she say how long she was going to be in Cedar Rapids?” she asked.

“No, and that’s what irks me,” I began. “Hank told her that he’d pay for two nights at the motel, and after that, he said that we would help her find a women’s shelter somewhere in another city.”

“That’s a good thing, ain’t it?”

“On the surface, it is,” I said cagily. “But my gut tells me that she has some sort of master plan.”

“Hank doesn’t want her back, does he?” Ms. Woaweesa inquired sharply.

“Oh, God, no! My husband is staying right where he is, much to Angie’s displeasure. Can you believe that she actually tried to play the homosexuality is an abomination angle with us last night? That woman’s whole life is the abomination!”

The old woman gave me a wry smile. “Angie does have a lot of nerve! Someone dressed like a sixteen-year-old girl going to a Whitesnake concert in a halter top and mini skirt ain’t got much room to be playing the God card!”

“Who’s Whitesnake?” I asked with a frown.

“Never mind… They were before your time. I have to ask this, and I hope ya don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Go ahead.”

“What did Hank ever see in Angie? She ain’t even remotely attractive. Is there something I ain’t seeing? I mean, the damn woman is missing most of her teeth!”