by Kaye George
When they were outside the restaurant, Kevin asked again. “Do you not like the Abrahams?”
Yolanda started to answer, but Tally beat her to it. “Lennie is okay,” she said, “but I can’t stand his wife, Frances. She’s had it in for my mother since I can remember.”
“Tally’s right,” Yolanda said. “She finds something mean to say about Tally’s mom every time they’re in town.”
“What’s her problem?” Kevin asked. “I’ve heard only good things about your mom from several of my customers. They’re excited she’s going to be in town. I thought everyone liked her. Both of your parents, really.”
They were walking toward Tally’s house first, since she lived the closest. Yolanda wondered if Kevin was going to come to her place and stay for a while. Or overnight. The tree frogs were in full voice, their songs ringing above them through the night from the live oaks and crape myrtles that lined the streets. The air was deliciously cooler than the mid-nineties high of the day. The thermometer was heading down to the upper sixties, and Yolanda wished she had a sweater on.
“That’s one of the problems,” Yolanda said. “Everyone likes Nancy, but hardly anyone likes Fran. Nancy is an old girlfriend of Fran’s husband. Lennie still acts very friendly when he sees Nancy, which doesn’t help anything.”
Kevin pulled his head back and frowned. “Nancy is Mrs. Holt’s first name? And she was a girlfriend of Mr. Abraham’s?”
Yolanda and Tally both nodded.
Kevin continued, “That must have been a long time ago. You’re, what, in your thirties? So it had to be more than thirty years ago.”
“Yes,” Tally said. “Fran has been a thorn in my mom’s side for their whole lives.”
“One problem Fran has is competition,” Yolanda said. “They’re both performers, after all.”
Yolanda had known Frances Abraham her whole life. Mrs. Abraham presently directed the local theater group and ruled it with an iron fist. To anyone she considered competition, she was extra nasty. She had sent more than one aspiring starlet home in tears, wanting all the starring roles for herself. That became more and more problematic as she aged and her face became more and more set into permanent harsh lines that you could now see even beyond the stage. She had verbally attacked Yolanda’s own sister, Violetta, so harshly and so often that Vi had dropped out of the one production she had tried out for. She’d been slated to have a starring role, too, but she couldn’t work under Fran. Yolanda remembered her little sister coming home in tears after every rehearsal until she quit.
“I’ve wondered, before, why Lennie puts up with her,” Kevin said. “They come into Bear Mountain sometimes and whatever wine he picks out, she nixes. She’s the boss.”
“From working with them, I can tell you this,” Yolanda answered. “He mostly ignores her. Just hammers the sets together and paints them and doesn’t pay attention to what goes on in front of his scenery.”
“I’d forgotten,” Tally said to Yolanda. “You were in some of her plays, weren’t you?”
“A few years ago, when I was much younger. I didn’t like working with her, but I stuck it out for a short time. Three productions one summer. I think most people who are in her productions put up with her because they love the stage.”
“No one forgets the past in a small town like this,” Kevin said.
“And she’s not a bad director, just a limelight hog,” Yolanda said.
“Too skinny for a hog,” Kevin answered, and they all laughed.
They rounded the corner to Tally’s block of East Shubert and she stopped. “It’s a day early! He’s here already!” Her brother’s Volvo sat in her driveway.
Meet the Author
Photo Credit: Megan Russow
One of Kaye George’s quirky claims to fame is having lived in nine states, many of which begin with the letter “M.”
A native Californian, Kaye moved to Moline, Illinois, at the tender age of three months. After college at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and marriage to Cliff during finals week their senior year, she and Cliff touched down in Sumter, SC; Lompoc, CA (very briefly); and Great Falls, Montana, during his Air Force career.
Kaye is also a violinist, an online mystery reviewer, an award winning short story writer, and the author of four different mystery series with three different publishers and one self-published. She has accrued three Agatha Award nominations and one finalist position for the Silver Falchion, as well as national bestseller status with her Fat Cat series written as Janet Cantrell.
Visit her at https://kayegeorge.wixsite.com/kaye-george.