Smart Cookie

by Elly Swartz

  “Hello,” I hear in the entrance way.

  Okay. Don’t be weird.

  I smile when I see her. She looks normal and has happy eyes. Good signs. That deserves at least five points on my mom list tally. “Hi, I’m Frankie.”

  “Hi there, I’m Evelyn. I’m looking for Brad.”

  “Oh, that’s my dad.” Here it is. The moment when I find out if she’s a kid-friendly mom or not so much.

  “How lovely!”

  Kid-friendly. Plus ten for question one.

  “You look just like his photos. Same eyes.”

  Weird. Maybe I do look like him.

  Her glance shifts to the window behind me.

  I turn around and don’t see anything unusual. Cars. Traffic. Maisy’s Florist. I hear Dad clanking around upstairs in the Clue Room. I know I’ve got about forty minutes of a Dad-free lobby while he touches up the mural of Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick that I may have accidentally-on-purpose spilled cranberry juice on to give myself a little time with Possible #2.

  “This is a lovely bed-and-breakfast.”

  Nice. Plus ten for question four.

  “Thanks. We like it,” I say.

  Then the front door flies open, and four kids come barreling in.

  “I have to pee!” the one with curls, a dress, and doll in diapers screams.

  “I told her to hold it, but she said she was going to pee all over her car seat,” another one with crooked teeth and crossed arms says.

  “I wasn’t going to stay in the car by myself,” a third kid in a Red Sox baseball cap adds.

  “You weren’t by yourself—I was there,” chimes the boy with the book.

  Curls hops up and down and up and down. I count. Thirty-three times.

  “I’m so sorry,” Evelyn says. “These are my children. Kelsey, Jonah, Jefferson, and Jacoby.”

  Four. Children.

  I scan my brain but don’t have a question on the list for other kids. Lots of other kids.

  “Can we use your bathroom?”

  I show her and Curls where the bathroom is, while Crooked Teeth stares at me, Book settles onto the couch, and Cap inspects every statue and photo in the lobby. Dad’s a big Larry Bird fan so the downstairs is covered with Celtics memorabilia.

  Crooked Teeth takes a big sniff of some wildflowers that sit in a vase by the snow globe of the Boston Commons. “I like your house. It smells nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I like this snow globe, too. I have one of our old white house with the big tree by the fence. The one we lived in with our dad.” He shakes it and watches the snow tumble down.

  “Now our dad’s dead,” Book says, coming up from the page.

  My heart fills with drops of sadness.

  Evelyn walks back into the room just in time to hear Book. “Oh, I’m really sorry. This is new for all of us,” she says as Curls’s hand tightens around her pointer finger.

  Curls starts to cry, and Evelyn kneels down next to her. “You’re okay, baby girl. It’s going to be all right. Mommy’s right here.” The little one snuggles into her mom’s arms.

  I hear Evelyn take a big breath. The kind Gram takes when she thinks someone’s moved the piles of papers on her couch.

  “This may have been a bad idea.” Evelyn’s shoulders sink. “I’m so sorry. I thought enough time had passed, but now I’m not sure any of us are ready for this yet.”

  I watch her scoop up Curls, gather her boys, and walk out the door. Sometimes only moms can make everything better.

  Then I take in all the air my lungs can hold, squeeze my eyes tight, and, in the place in my heart where good things go, wish for a family.

  After school, I meet Dad in front of the school. His Jeep was a Father’s Day present to himself. Gram and I got him a Jeep tire cover with a big yellow smiley face on it. Nose included.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  “Definitely,” I say as I hop in and load our music. We made the Climb playlist last year. His song. My song. His song. My song. It takes us to the trail, up the mountain, down the mountain, and back home. I’m secretly hoping he’ll tell me about Reggie on the ride, but he doesn’t. I think about telling him about Operation Ghost, but I don’t.

  More conversation holes.

  When we get to the path, it’s quiet and empty, except for one older couple holding hands fifty yards up. It’s beautiful here. The trees, even without their leaves, feel majestic. Elliot thinks they just look naked.

  “Here you go.” Dad hands me a tall, sturdy walking stick. That’s been our thing since I was little and needed one. Now it’s just what we do. As my hiking boots crunch against the hardened path, I take in a big breath of mountain air. We walk for a while until I gather all the tiny bits of my courage. “So, um, I was thinking of doing some organizing around the B&B.”

  “That would be great, Francine. Really helpful. The repair binder is a mess, and the bills are somehow no longer alphabetical, and—”

  “I didn’t exactly mean in the B&B. More like around the B&B, the garden, the shed,” I say as nonchalantly as I can without giving too much away.

  “Well, you can definitely pull the dead stuff in the garden and arrange the tools, bags of dirt, lime, and manure that are left over from the season.” Dad takes the left fork in the trail. Most people go right, but we’ve been climbing this mountain for so long that we know the secret shortcuts.

  “Great, and I can do the same with the shed. I mean organize the stuff in there.”

  Dad stops walking and turns toward me. “Francine, you know the shed’s off-limits. It’s Gram’s.”

  “That’s so stupid.”

  “Maybe,” he says, which totally surprises me.

  “Well, if you think it’s stupid and I think it’s stupid, let’s talk to Gram. I can organize her things with her. I won’t throw anything away. I mean, it’s her stuff.”

  Dad’s climbing again. I see the back of his head shaking from side to side. “The shed is hers. Gram can do whatever she wants with it. That’s the deal.”

  “Well, what if there’s something in there that’s not hers?” I promised Elliot I’d ask.

  “Like what?” He steps on the prickers in the path so I can pass without getting poked. No blood on my watch is one of Dad’s hiking rules.

  I’m not sure how to explain that the thing I think may be hiding in the shed might be the very reason the B&B has more empty rooms than guests these days.

  “Don’t know. That’s why I want to get in there and straighten things out.”

  “You’ll have to ask Gram.” Dad stops up ahead, kneels down, and plucks some blueberries and hands me a fistful. Another tradition. The blueberry patch. Hike. Pick. Eat. Hike. Pick. Eat. Save some to bring back for Gram. I wonder if I can barter blueberries for shed entry.

  “I’m sorry about the float thing,” Dad says out of nowhere.

  Kind of shocked he’s even still thinking about it. I thought he’d say no, he said no, and I moved on.

  Almost.

  “I know you’re busy. It’s okay.” I focus on picking the blueberries so the water in my eyes stays put.

  “It’s not really. It’s just … there’s always so much to do and a lot of people are counting on me. I’m only one person, you know?”

  “I know.” The unsaid floats between us.

  If Mom was alive.

  If Mom was around.

  If Mom was, well, not dead.

  The sun feels warm on my face. I wonder if it’s her, Mom. Joining us. Telling us everything’s going to be okay.

  Then a cloud rolls past, and the sun disappears.

  I look at Dad and want to tell him that maybe soon he won’t be alone. We’ll be a family again. But if I tell him about the mom search now, he’ll make me stop. He’ll say that he’s fine by himself. That he doesn’t have time for anyone else.

  “Maybe next year I can help out with the parade. I’m trying to make some changes that’ll make things better for bo
th of us,” Dad says.

  “Like letting me experiment with food coloring again?”

  He laughs. “Nope. That’s going to stay exactly the same. No food coloring. It took me five rewashes with heavy bleach to unpurple all those sheets and towels.”

  We put Gram’s blueberries in the special pouch we always bring for her. She used to come with us until her knee (and hip and back) were too sore for the hike. We climb in silence for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Mine include Gram’s blueberry bread, ghosts, and how long it’ll take to find another Possible.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask him after curiosity drains my brain.

  “Replacing the welcome mat, ordering a new printer cartridge, whether we’ll ever actually finish our puzzle, and, how hiking with you is one of my favorite things in the whole world.”

  And just like that, the sun pokes through the clouds, and its warmth wraps itself around me.

  I make the check-in cookies on Sunday—the regular ones—no need to bring Mom into this today. Then I grab my backpack, step over Dad’s new YOU ARE HOME mat that looks exactly like the old YOU ARE HOME mat minus the dirt, and head out to visit Gram at the senior center. Maybe she’ll help me figure out what’s going on with Jess and the Dad-Reggie thing.

  When I walk into the center, the smell of cooked cabbage hits me in the face.

  “Hi, Frankie,” says MaryKate. MaryKate works the front desk of Mill’s Senior Center and loves Gram.

  “Hey there. How’d the paper go?” Last week, MaryKate was stressing over some big paper she had to write for her college social work class, so Gram helped her revise.

  She gives me a thumbs-up. “Your gram was such a huge help. Don’t know what I would do without her.”

  I totally get that.

  “MaryKate, can I ask you something?” The something that’s been squirming around my brain since Mr. Bearson first brought up the float.

  “Sure, anything,” she says like she has time. Like she doesn’t have two jobs and also go to school. She pats the seat next to her and offers me some of her jalapeño chips.

  I slide in. “What do you think of the Winter Family Festival Parade?”

  She looks confused. “I like it. Especially the hot cocoa with extra marshmallows.”

  “But, um, do you ever miss not having a family to go with?” Gram told me that MaryKate’s dad died from something I can’t pronounce a few years ago.

  Her eyebrows scrunch. “I do have a family to go with. I mean, it’s not like before. But I watch the parade with my mom and my uncle James, and I get to see all the people in my life who feel like family. Like your gram and the other folks here at the center who look out for me.”

  Mrs. Rudabaker nods from a couch in the corner as she pulls on her blue yarn and clacks her knitting needles.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  MaryKate hugs me and then says, “Speaking of your gram, she looked tired this morning. What’s she been up to?”

  I have no answer because I have no idea. I let my worrying slide when Dad fed me the she’s-busy-with-stuff excuse. Now my worry meter is back on the rise.

  The door to the card room’s open. I look in but don’t see her, so I run to the room in the back where I sometimes find her reading. It’s closed. When I knock, there’s no answer. A light push on the door slides it open. I poke my head into the room.

  Gram’s lying on the couch sleeping. Not working on stuff. Not playing cards. Just sleeping in the middle of the day. And snoring. Loudly. I inch the door open wider and put my butt on the uncomfortable mud-brown plastic chair next to the couch.

  And wait.

  I play Word Play on my phone, win nine and lose four.

  She’s still sleeping. I whisper, “Gram.” I don’t really want to wake her, but I want her to be awake. I cough.

  Nothing.

  I water the limp plant next to the window, then text Elliot, who informs me that Operation Ghost is ready to go. Gram will know if we’re doing the right thing about the ghost. She’ll know what to do about Jessica and Dad and Reggie. She’ll know what to do about all of it. When she wakes up.

  I sit and sketch her while she rests. She looks peaceful, which makes drawing her much easier than the time I had to sketch Elliot for art class. He never stopped moving.

  My butt starts to numb, so I cruise the halls and land in the card room. This time, Mabel, Gram’s best friend, is sitting in there playing solitaire.

  “Want to play gin?” she asks. Mabel’s eighty-seven and, according to Gram, cheats at cards.

  We play anyway.

  “A run and three of a kind,” Mabel says as she lays down her cards. This is the fourth hand in a row that I’ve lost. I’m starting to think Gram is right. Mabel smiles, and I see the gap between her gums and her poorly fitted dentures. But I’m just happy she’s got them in this time. Last time I visited, she was all gums.

  “Good game,” I say.

  She smiles again and shuffles the cards. “Got time for another one?” she asks, popping a fifth piece of caramel candy into her mouth.

  I nod. “Just waiting for Gram to wake up.” I’m hoping Mabel will fill me in, but she’s quiet as she deals us each seven cards and slides me a piece from her candy stash.

  I eat the caramel and continue. “I kind of thought she’d be working on the newsletter. Isn’t it due, like, any day?”

  Mabel nods but gives up nothing.

  I have a terrible hand. No runs, no pairs, no like suits.

  “You guys playing cards later?” I ask.

  She shrugs. I pick up an ace of spades, put it next to my ace of clubs, and discard my rogue queen. Mabel takes it.

  “So what’s going on with Gram?”

  She stares at me, assessing what I already know. Which is clearly nothing. Then she lays down her cards. “Gin.”

  “How do you do that?” I mean, I’m not even close.

  “Patience.”

  “And cheating,” Ben says from the table next to us. His silver hair catches the sun.

  Mabel winks at him. “I bet your gram’s awake now,” she says to me. As I stand, she hugs my waist. “You’re a wonderful granddaughter. Even if you stink at cards.”

  As I walk back to find Gram, I can still hear Mabel laughing.

  Inside the back room, Gram’s sitting up with glasses on and book open.

  “Just lost too many games of gin to Mabel.”

  Now Gram’s laughing. “I love her, but I told you that she cheats.”

  I glide in next to Gram on the couch. “So what’s up?” I begin. “Dad made breakfast and I made the cookies and you’re not playing cards. So what gives?”

  Her golden-flecked hazel eyes hold my face.

  “I was up late doing the newsletter. Then I had to come here early to have a chat with Mr. Caldwell. His opinion piece was late again.”

  “You know he does that on purpose.” Mr. Caldwell’s piece has been late every month for the last eight months. “He’s late so you’ll have to find him and have a talk with him at least once a month.”

  She laughs but says nothing.

  “Is that what this is all about? Mr. Caldwell?”

  Her fingers wrap mine. “Frankie, I forgot to tell you that I made your favorite blueberry bread from the blueberries you guys brought back from the hike. I snuck a slice this morning. Delicious. I left it on the kitchen counter for you.”

  Clearly, we’re not talking about Mr. Caldwell. I accept defeat for now and grab my book from my backpack. We read together separately until it’s time to head back to the B&B. We make a quick stop at Sal’s General Store on the way home. I get a double scoop of banana ice cream with chocolate sprinkles and a hot-fudge sundae to go for Dad. Gram buys three frames, four more packages of hangers, and five pairs of argyle socks because they’re on sale.

  When we walk into the B&B, Dad’s pacing and doing that weird thing with his jaw that he did the time I let Rufus out of his cage to play and Mrs. Kohlberg found him in the
Chess room, slithering between the knight and the bishop. I think about Operation Mom and the ghost, and cross my fingers that his angry feet and stiff jaw aren’t directed at me.

  He kisses the top of my head.

  Okay. Not mad at me.

  Then he asks me to go upstairs. To my room.

  Uh-oh.

  I hand him the sundae, give Gram a quick kiss, grab Lucy, who’s hiding her plastic toy turkey under the seat cushion in the library, and fly up the stairs.

  “We had a deal,” I hear him say. Dad’s never mastered the art of whispering.

  “We did. In fact, we still do.” Gram’s voice.

  “Bea, the deal was that you keep the stuff that doesn’t fit in your room in the shed.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I can’t have your overflow stuff in the halls or the entranceway of the B&B. It looks terrible, it doesn’t make our guests feel like they’re being looked after, and, most importantly, it’s a fire hazard.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bea, they could shut us down. Then I can’t take care of you or Francine.”

  I freeze. The words shut us down pierce my gut in a place I can’t make feel better. That place where all the really bad stuff goes forever. Like anchovies and Brussels sprouts and Dead Mom.

  “So no boxes or frames or hangers or wrapping paper in the entrance.” The sound of Dad’s voice trails up the stairs.

  Wrapping paper? There was more wrapping paper? I could have definitely used some of that for Elliot’s ghost-hunting laser.

  Gram says nothing.

  “Okay?” Dad asks.

  “Brad, I’ll keep my boxes and things out of the entranceway. I’d never want to create a fire hazard. But my other things aren’t a hazard. They’re tucked away in the room next to mine. They’re my things, and I need them. I don’t tell you where to keep your tools, your repair binder, or your muddy hiking boots.”

  I wish going to my room meant I actually couldn’t hear this.

  “Bea, that room you’re using for storage is for guests.”