Saint was pretty sure he was about to have to break up an old man fight if he didn’t do something quickly.
Imagine his surprise when his daughter was the one who defused the situation.
“You’re not being nice,” she said clearly and firmly. “Calling someone a cheater just because you didn’t win is not nice.”
“Yeah,” Abuelo Papo said.
But Saint’s daughter wasn’t done. She turned to her great-grandfather and said, “You shouldn’t make other people feel bad when they don’t win. You need to be a good sport and not call people names.”
Both men stood there looking down at Rosie at a loss for words.
Abuelo Papo looked up and met Saint’s eyes. He gave him an incredulous look.
Saint raised palms in a slight shrug. What could he say? Every word out of her mouth was the truth.
“You both should apologize,” Rosie told them.
“That’s going too far,” Abuelo said and at the same time Benny said, “I’m not apologizing to him.”
Apparently his little girl was on a roll, because she scolded them some more. “If you don’t apologize then everyone will know that you don’t know how to play nicely. People won’t want to play with either one of you anymore. Then what will you do? You won’t have any friends to play with.”
“He’s not my friend,” Abuelo argued. “He’s the thief who stole all of my left shoes and put them in the donation bin.”
“Only after you replaced all the pictures in my living room with pictures of Walter Mercado,” Benny accused.
Abuelo smirked. “I was only trying to show you ‘mucho mucho amor.’” He made a circle around his heart with one hand, kissed his fingers, and then lifted it toward Benny just like the famous astrologist used to do.
Saint closed his eyes and rubbed them with the heel of his hand before rubbing the rest of his face. Maria had mentioned the ongoing prank war, but Saint hadn’t really believed it. “Abuelo, you’re going to get yourself kicked out.”
“I didn’t take anything. I just put the Walter Mercado pictures in front of his other pictures.”
“You two are being bullies and it’s not good to be a bully,” Rosie told them.
“You tell them, Rosie,” came the voice Saint least expected to hear at the moment.
Rosie clearly didn’t expect it either, because when she heard Lola’s voice she swung her head in Saint’s direction and looked over his shoulder in horror. Everything about her expression screamedbusted.
Poor thing. She’d been caught talking by the one person she didn’t want to know how well-spoken she was.
Luckily, Lola didn’t make a big deal out of it. Instead she turned her attention to her grandfather. “Is this really how bad you’ve gotten, Benny, so bad that you need to be reprimanded by a four-year-old?”
Benny scowled. “No.”
Lola scoffed. “Then prove it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Apologize to them all for ruining their game.”
“I didn’t ruin anything. He did.”
“I did not,” Abuelo protested.
“You did.” Saint spoke up. “You were talking trash to them both the entire time.”
“That’s how you play!”
“You did it to mess with Benny,” Saint told him. “When you saw him getting upset, you did it even more instead of backing off.”
“Because he only wanted to play to try to make me look like a fool, but I made him look like one.”
“I’m no fool! You are!” Benny yelled.
