No Nest for the Wicket(62)

“Not during the morning game,” she said. “He stayed for that—she can’t drive, you know, so someone has to take her anywhere she wants to go. Since her seizures started up again, he mostly takes her himself. But he had an appointment in the afternoon—he had to leave before lunch ended. He made us promise never to let her out of our sight.”

“And we didn’t,” the second said.

“Didn’t help our game much,” the first added. “Not that we had much of a chance of winning to begin with.”

“Helping May was more important,” Suzy two said with a firm nod.

“Do you know where he went?”

The Suzies shook their heads.

“It must have been important if he left May to do it,” one of them said.

Important to him. I glanced across the yard again. An honor guard of Shiffleys was carrying Mrs. Briggs toward the driveway, with Mr. Briggs hovering anxiously over her and Dad scrambling along behind, his oversized headband/bandage askew. If the ER got much more business from our parties, they’d send the county health department over to shut us down as a public menace.

“We should go down and see if they need anything,” one of the Suzies said.

The other one nodded.

“We’ll see you later,” the first one said. I watched as the two of them meticulously deposited their trash and recyclables in the appropriate containers before bustling off on their errand of mercy.

“You look glum,” Michael said as he joined me. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I just like it better when people stay in their pigeonholes. Mr. Briggs was a lot easier to hate when he was merely a despoiler of the countryside and not also the caring husband of a sick wife. And the clones. They’re reasonably nice people. I should make an effort to learn their names or something. Even though we’re destined to end up squared off on opposite sides of the mall battle.”

“Life’s messy,” Michael said. “Come have some brunch. The Shiffleys are pretty good cooks.”

Everyone was subdued after the Briggses’ sudden departure. Except for Dad, who was busy reassuring everyone that Mrs. Briggs would be fine—I deduced as much from the fact that he hadn’t gone to the hospital with her—and relating anecdotes about epilepsy and other seizure disorders, which was bound to give us a lively afternoon if any of my more impressionable hypochondriac relatives were listening.

When the inevitable stray sheep showed up, we found that Spike had learned something from Dad’s sheep-herding lessons after all. Not something we wanted him learning, unfortunately. He’d figured out that if you sneaked up behind the sheep and nipped their heels just right, they’d leap into the air in a fair imitation of Morris dancers before kicking at him. Unfortunately, he’d also discovered that people, currently more plentiful than sheep, reacted just as amusingly and didn’t kick with such gusto. I exiled him to his pen and left a message on the answering machine of yet another dog trainer who’d been recommended to us.

Even more unsettling, Mother was up to something. She’d been sitting for an hour, talking to Lacie. If anyone came near, she lowered her voice and gestured imperiously for privacy. The one scrap of conversation I overheard wasn’t encouraging.

“Your loyalty is admirable, Lacie dear, but you have yourself to consider … .”

That was all I’d caught, but it was enough. Mother was trying to drive a wedge between Mrs. Pruitt and her minions. Foment rebellion in the lower ranks of the Caerphilly Historical Society. I was slightly relieved when, after getting a call on her cell phone, Lacie scurried out to her car and drove off, but the damage was probably already done.

I was so busy worrying about what Mother was up to that I was caught off guard by a shift in the direction of Dad’s attention.





Chapter Thirty-one

“Meg,” Dad said, “what are we going to do about the Shiffleys?”

“Why? What do we need to do about them?” I asked, sitting down beside him at one of the picnic tables. “Are they causing a problem?”

“No,” Dad said. “But they’re here.”

Which counted as a problem in my book, though I didn’t want to say it. Not where any of the Shiffleys might hear me, and that could be almost anywhere. Most of them were still harmlessly occupied with their grills, fixing bacon, eggs, and grits for all comers, but earlier I’d had to break up an argument between two of them over some aspect of the suspended roof repairs. I wouldn’t have bothered, no matter how loud they got or how wildly they gesticulated, if they hadn’t chosen to stage their argument three stories over my head, on the framework of two-by-fours that would eventually support the new roof. Fortunately, they’d kept their balance better than their tempers.