The answer she came up with was not much. They wouldn’t like it, not one bit.
Then again, she couldn’t imagine Gram or her mother for that matter ever allowing anything to happen to the house or allowing it to go out of the family.
Desperate times, desperate measures.
She couldn’t think about what they’d think. She’d learned the hard way after Ben died and she tried to hold on to what they had that she had to live in the here and now, keep herself fed and keep her legacy safe.
The bell in the door clattered taking her out of her thoughts just as the kettle flipped off.
“Can you see to the drinks, Pete?” Abby asked as she headed out of the kitchen.
“Sure thing, love,” Pete replied.
Abby walked through the house, pulled open her huge front door and on the stoop stood Mrs. Truman with her three spaniels on leads.
Abby tried not to groan.
Instead, she greeted, “Mrs. Truman.”
“Well?” Mrs. Truman snapped.
“Well what?” Abby asked.
“Well, what was it like?” Mrs. Truman snapped again.
“What was what like?” Abby queried, confused and hiding impatience.
“Your date!” Mrs. Truman shrieked then shoved her way in, bringing her dogs with her, something that Zee would not like at all. “Making an old woman stand out in the cold,” she muttered. “What’s with young people these days?” Mrs. Truman went on to grouse, bending down to detach the leashes from her canines who scattered to the four winds upon release.
“Mrs. Truman, my cat –” Abby started.
“Pah! Your cat can take care of himself. Little Georgie learned that the hard way,” she announced as she unbuttoned the big, fabric-coated buttons of her granny coat. “I need tea,” she declared.
“I’m kind of –” Abby began again but Mrs. Truman had her coat off with a nimbleness of someone at least three hundred and forty-two years younger and threw it over the antique, oak, mirrored coat stand in Abby’s vestibule.
Abby heard her old lady shoes squelch on the tiled floors as Mrs. Truman headed toward the kitchen.
With no other choice, Abby closed her front door and followed but she did so after heaving a deep sigh.
By the time she’d made it to the kitchen Mrs. Truman was opening and closing cupboards, reaching high on her tiptoes to do so as she was about four foot tall and Pete was carrying three full coffee mugs with a packet of biscuits tucked under his arm.
Abby gave him a “save me” look but he was rushing toward the door however he had the decency to look sheepish about it.
“Did you see the papers, Peter?” Mrs. Truman called, finding herself one of Abby’s grandmother’s delicate and irreplaceable (thus never used) china teacups with saucer and the box of tea.
Pete, his escape foiled, turned to the older lady.
“The papers?” he asked.
Mrs. Truman jerked a thumb at Abby and said, “Our girl here out on a date with an international playboy.”
Abby didn’t know when she became Mrs. Truman’s girl and for a moment she considered it more terrifying than what her life had become.
“Is that so?” Pete asked, already knowing about her date because he had, indeed, seen the papers.
“They look good together,” Mrs. Truman grumbled, dropping a teabag in the teacup and sounding like she didn’t believe her own words. “Though he’s way too tall,” she said this last as if Cash could and should do something about his height.
“I’ve got to take these to the boys, if you’ll excuse me,” Pete said and started to head out, giving Abby an apologetic look.
“Yes, Abigail’s having work done again,” Mrs. Truman poured water into her tea, “banging, knocking, banging, blah, blah, blah. It’s enough to kill an old woman.”
Because it made her a very bad person, Abby tried to stop herself from thinking that might be a wish come true but she couldn’t quite do it.
“I’ll just be heading up,” Pete said.
Mrs. Truman waved him on his way at the same time she spooned three sugars (a fact Abby found unbelievable, there was nothing sweet about Mrs. Truman) into her tea. “Go, go, go. Abigail’s got some talking to do and it’s not for men’s ears.”
Abby rolled her eyes to the ceiling. As she did this Pete disappeared.
When she mentally came back into the room, Mrs. Truman was helping herself to some biscuits.
“I’ve just made a decision,” she proclaimed and Abby braced.
“What’s that?” Abby asked, not wanting to know and going to the kettle to make herself another cup of coffee.
“I’m having you and your new man over for dinner with those two friends of yours. The Australians,” Mrs. Truman told her as she teetered to the table balancing her cup and saucer which held four biscuits and Abby sucked in breath in horror at the very idea of Cash, Jenny and Kieran sitting down at any table much less Mrs. Truman’s table.
“That’s very nice of you but it isn’t necessary, Mrs. Truman,” Abby replied.
“I know it isn’t necessary. If it was necessary I wouldn’t do it.” Then she contradicted herself. “But someone has to size this fellow up and with your grandmother out of the picture that someone is me.”
Abby desperately tried a different tactic. “Cash is a pretty busy guy, he’s –”
“Pah!” Mrs. Truman burst out and Abby waited for her to say more but apparently she felt that summed up her argument.
In another demonstration of just how bad her luck could get, at that very moment Abby’s mobile, lying on the table in front of Mrs. Truman, sounded.
Abby, all the way across the kitchen and with her hands full, couldn’t get to it as fast as the heretofore-unknown agile Mrs. Truman could.
She snatched it off the table, studied it briefly and then slid it open as Abby dropped the spoon and coffee and hurried across the room.
“Mrs. Truman –” she said as the older woman put the phone to her ear.
“Abigail Butler’s phone, Edith Truman speaking,” she announced grandly.
Abby halted and hoped to all that was holy that there was a salesman or someone else she didn’t care about on the other end.
“Yes, Abigail’s here and I’m glad you called,” she said tartly, sounding as if she was not glad and furthermore the last time she was glad was 1943. “Abigail and I were just talking about you and we’ve decided you’re both coming to dinner at my house tomorrow. Seven o’clock.”