Ifindmygrandmain her usual seat in my parents’ living room. Family dinner isn’t for a little while, but I’ve already filled up my mom’s fridge with all of London's baked goods and raided her first aid stash for Neosporin.
“Grandma, we need to talk,” I say.
She flicks off the TV and turns a wicked gleam on me. “Did you get it?”
“Yes. But not without nearly killing myself.” I grimace when my wound presses into the couch cushions. After I left the bakery, I went to Lennox to replace my makeshift bandage. I thought she’d be more gentle than Trent, but she nearly threw up right on my back. She says it looks awful and I should go to the doctor. I assured her she was being dramatic and played with my nephew for two hours so she and Grant could have a break.
“What’d you do that for?” Grandma asks.
I frown. “You’re not going to ask me how I am?”
“We both know you’re fine. Now where is it?”
The sympathy from this woman is astounding.
I hold out the atrocious cat I stole from a group of seventy-year-old witches.
She rips the orange stuffed kitty free of my hand and very nearly cackles. “They said their power came from this thing, ha! I’d like to see what they can do now! They kicked me out of their little group before I could nab it myself, now look at me.” She holds the kitty up in the sky, its demonic red eyes glowing like the lights on the Christmas tree.
Wait, something isn’t making sense here.
“What do you mean? You said that was yours, and I was retrieving it. You didn’t say I was stealing it.” My own grandmother sent me on a con?
“Tomato tomahto.” She places the cat on the giant Nutcracker's hat to her side that she’s been using as a side table.
“Edith Bentley, I’m not going to jail for a stuffed kitten.”
“What have I said about using my full name?” she scolds and mutters under her breath, “I should have given you kids one of my aliases. No one’s going to send you to jail. You wore the costume, right? Where is it?”
“The costume didn’t make it.” It was also the only reason I wasn't impaled.
“Drat,” she pouts. “That was my favorite bathrobe.”
I rub my forehead. “Let me get this straight, I was running through a strip mall in yourbathrobe, with a stolen stuffed cat?”
Grandma kicks her feet in her chair and hoots. “Did someone get that on video?”
“Grandma!”
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad, you’ve done worse for less. Here.”
She hands me a hundred-dollar bill. I’m not one to take money from old ladies, but in this case, I feel justified.
I drop my head into the couch. “What am I doing, Grandma?”
“You’re looking for your purpose boy, and you haven’t found it yet.”
“I like my job,” I say. Unlike Trent, who is officially quitting our family business. Traitor.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your real passion. You haven’t found something to challenge you in other ways, and you’re bored. Hence, the deal with the seventy-six-year-old.”
“That is…” Maybe that’s what I’m doing. When did my life become so pathetic? Have I always been this way?
“Sean!” my mom yells. “Why are there a million cake boxes in my fridge?”
I heave myself off the couch and wander to the kitchen, grinning at my mom as I lean against the counter. “Don’t be so dramatic. There are clearly only four. I’ve done far worse things.” As my grandmother so kindly reminded me.
My mother, the ever-loving woman she is, doesn’t drudge up the past. “The cake boxes?”
