If it was because he’d gotten arrested, I’d kill him myself.
“He went with Cole, sweetheart. You know what those two are like.” Mom rolled her eyes as Grams cut into the cobbler Gramps had set down, a look of envy on his face.
“Oh, Hurst,” Grams called out, not looking at him as she served us. “We made five of these for tonight. If you could make sure the kids get some and some of the ice cream, that’d be awesome.”
Gramps perked up, a look of deviousness on his face. “Sure, sure, never a problem, Lindee. I’ll do it myself.”
“Oh, and, Hurst?” Gramps turned back around. “I’ll know if any of y’all have even so much as a spoonful of it. Don’t forget who those babies go to when they want to get out of the trouble you get them into.”
The smile on his face fell. “Tattle telling little—”
“Finish that sentence, dear, and you won’t eat anything but boiled cabbage for a month. And you know how that stuff affects your stomach, so you’ll sleep on the porch in a sleeping bag the whole time. Maybe the fresh air would do you some good, though. We’ll have to see.”
Holy hell. When my grandma was like this, she was absolutely outstanding. Her ability to deal shade while not even changing her tone from happy and relaxed was a skill I wanted when I was her age.
Smiling at us, she picked up where she’d left off as if nothing had even happened.
“Yes, investigating. I’m so sorry, Mark, that your house is being invaded like that. Once they clear it for you to move back into, we’ll help you out.” Her eyes slid to the side as her nose scrunched up. “Although, we’ll probably do that after a specialist cleaner’s been inside.”
Turning back to Mark, I asked, “Was someone hurt at your place?”
He dropped his spoon into the bowl and sighed. “That’s what we’re looking into. Whatever happened there needs some answers.” He made a gagging noise. “Or maybe not.”
“I didn’t think those apartments looked safe the last time I went by there. Have they had any work done on them in the last twenty years?”
I was sure that’s where a drug dealer had been arrested. That’s not to say all of them were drug dealers but having someone like that close by could attract trouble. God, what if some of the other inhabitants had kids?
Grams chuckled. “Mark hasn’t lived there for a long time. He bought the Mitchell place on Magnolia Road.”
I didn’t realize I’d dropped my spoon until it hit the bowl, much louder than Mark’s had.
“He what?”
“Surprise!” Mark said dryly.
Anything else I was going to say was interrupted by Gramps yelling in the kitchen.
“She said he bought what? Ah, come on, now we’ve definitely lost Layla. She loves that house more than she loves oxygen. Shit, man, who’s going to be on my poker team on the fourth of July?”
“Jack Townsend,” Mom screamed, glaring over at the entrance to the kitchen.
Sure enough, Dad’s face peeked around the corner hesitantly. “Yes, dear?”
“Stop eavesdropping and help clean the kitchen. Now look what you’ve done.”
My grandpa stormed to the entrance and stood glaring at Mark with his hands on his hips.
“I can’t believe you did something so underhanded… so sneaky… so, so…” his mouth opened and closed while he thought of a word through his anger. Finally, he smiled and looked almost proud. “I’ll go with brilliant. Well played, young man. Well played.”
See, this was the thing about my family—I couldn’t keep up. It was like a constant game of interpretation and psychiatry or psychology. Their moods and reactions ricocheted around the place until they hit one they wanted to stick to.
The only people I knew would be able to explain it to me were the two women sitting across the table, who had years of experience with all of the males in the family.
Grams shrugged her shoulders and casually spooned another mouthful of cobbler into her mouth. “He just doesn’t want to lose his little buddy. Y’all have been tight since you were a baby, and now he has to accept that you’ve grown up.”
Mom looked toward the kitchen again, then a sinister smile appeared. This one wasn’t as scary as the forced one she’d had earlier, but it still made me worried for my sanity.
“Know what? Seeing as how the male Townsends have lost their minds and turned into a bunch of shitheads, while the kids finish off their cobbler, why don’t we tell you some stories about each of them?”