“Heck no. It means he’s cheating on you.”
“He’s not cheating on me.”
“How do you know?”
“I guess I don’t exactly know,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure.”
“Aha!” Lula said. “There you have it.”
This had me doing a mental head-slap. It was becoming more and more clear why they kicked her out of the hospital.
“Do you want ice cream, or not?”
“Sure, I’ll have some ice cream.”
I gave her a pint of ice cream, a spoon, and the television remote.
“Is this a new television?” Lula asked. “I don’t remember you having a big television like this. You had one that was a step away from rabbit ears.”
“Diesel bought it.”
“Uh oh!” Lula said.
I wasn’t buying into the uh oh this time. I went to the dining room table to see if my email was still All Oswald All the Time. I opened my laptop and wasn’t disappointed.
I was still at the table when I got a call from Grandma.
“The strangest thing just happened,” she said. “Your mother ran out of yarn, so she did a yarn run before your father came home for dinner.”
“Where was he?”
“He had to fill in with the cab. Willie Small came down with a bursted appendix and they were short a cab for the commuter rush hour at the train station. Anyway, I was in the kitchen and there was a knock on the front door, and I opened it without thinking. I was making gravy, and you know how you have to keep stirring it while it cooks down. You’ll never guess who it was?”
“Oswald?”
“Yes! I recognized him from his picture. He pushed past me and rushed in, looking all around. And then he ran through the house, out to the kitchen and upstairs, opening doors and slamming them shut.
“I’m calling the police,” I said to him. “I gotta make gravy.”
I guess Oswald decided I was dumber than he originally thought.
“If I wasn’t so caught off guard, I could have snagged him, but my gun was upstairs. I thought about whacking him with the fry pan, but I had gravy going in it. It was the good cast iron one. I suppose I could have gone after him with the carving knife, but I’ve never been good with a knife. And he was moving fast like a crazy person. His eyes were squinchy and his forehead was frowny.
“？‘They aren’t here,’ he said to me. ‘Where are they?’
“？‘Who?’ I asked him. ‘What are you talking about?’
“And he ran out and got into his car and drove away.”
“Did you see the car?”
“Yes. It was a blue sedan. I don’t know what kind. I’m thinking I should keep this between you and me,” Grandma said. “Your mother isn’t good at dealing with these dramatic episodes.”
Diesel rolled in at six o’clock with bags of food.
“I smell Pino’s,” Lula yelled from the couch.
Diesel looked in at Lula and then at me. “Can it get any worse than this?” he asked.
“It can almost always get worse. They kicked her out of the hospital. She’s only here for one night and then I can take her home.”
“We’ve got meatball sandwiches, pizza with the works, vodka rigatoni, and chicken parm. Plus, a bunch of sides. What do you want?” I asked Lula.
“Just fill a plate,” she said. “I’m starving. They wouldn’t feed me in the hospital.”
I piled food onto a plate, grabbed a bottle of water, and took it all to Lula. Diesel and I ate standing in the kitchen.
“How’s your internet?” Diesel asked me.
“I just checked a little while ago. It’s nonexistent.”
He helped himself to a second slice of pizza. “Mine’s wiped out, too. He crashed my computer. At least I didn’t get pages and pages of retribution.”
“Did he cut you off without sending you any kind of message?”
“His message was HAHAHAHAHA!”
“He might be a genius hacker, but he has no imagination when it comes to anything else. He visited my parents’ house a half hour ago. Grandma just called to tell me. She was alone in the house. She said Oswald ran through the whole house, asked her where ‘they’ were hiding and left. She said he drove away in a blue sedan. Grandma said she would have hit him with the iron fry pan, but she was making gravy in it.”
Lula made her way into the kitchen. “That was real good,” she said, setting the plate on the counter. “I appreciate that you’re helping me out in my time of need. I’m sure I’ll be better tomorrow, but right now I’m wiped out. Where do I sleep? I don’t mind sharing a bed or I can sleep on the couch.”