Kerrianne shushed me. “Yes, she’s here, but she’s out on the front porch. I didn’t want to let her in without talking to you first.”
“Close all the blinds,” I said. “I’ll be out in a second.”
“OK. Also, you might want to think about taking care of this area,” she said, waving at her head.
“That’s my whole face,” I told her.
She nodded. “Yes, it is.”
Several minutes later, I had thrown on jeans and a cardigan and was trying to look respectable as I sprinted to my front door. I was maybe eighty-two percent awake, but that was as good as it was going to get. Kerrianne passed me a freshly warmed bottle of synthetic blood as I whipped through the kitchen.
She was a wonder, that Kerrianne.
“Hi, Mom!” Danny cried as I passed the foldout couch. I paused to kiss the top of his head and gauge his temperature. I guessed it was slightly less than one hundred degrees. Wade and Harley, it seemed, had recovered enough to drive home.
Marge, as promised, was waiting outside my front door, holding an enormous CorningWare container of something that smelled like old socks—to me, at least. She was wearing her “Number 1 Grandma” sweatshirt and a tremulous smile.
I stepped out onto my porch, crossing my arms over my chest and shivering slightly. The air was finally starting to turn crisp after the remaining heat and humidity of September had ebbed away. Fall would be blowing us over before we knew it. Danny was still debating his costume choices for Halloween but felt pressure to narrow it down since most kids wore their costumes to the Pumpkin Patch Party. He and Harley were trying to coordinate, of course, and while Danny was lobbying for characters like Ninja Turtles or Avengers, Harley was pushing for something clever, like Danny dressing as toast covered in peanut butter and Harley dressing as toast with jelly. Danny was trying to undermine the idea by claiming it was rude to the kids who were allergic to peanuts.
They’d spent hours debating this matter from their sickbeds, to the point where I started coming up with fake “bookkeeping emergencies” so I could hide in my room with my laptop . . . until Kerrianne figured out what I was doing and gave me some super-judgmental looks.
“I heard that Danny is sick,” Marge said.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Marge. Not until we get everything settled with the courts,” I said. “I can’t believe I have to put it this way, but I don’t feel comfortable talking to you without a lawyer present.”
“I know, I know, but I couldn’t bear to think of Danny being sick without anyone to take care of him.”
“Danny has people to take care of him. The fact that you think I would leave him without someone to care for him while he’s sick, that’s probably why we have to have lawyers involved when we speak,” I told her, my voice ice-cold.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
I gritted my teeth. When Rob was alive, I let Marge get away with a lot of comments and criticisms under the guise of “not what I meant” because it was too hard to convince her that regardless of her intention, insults still hurt. Rob always told me to just let it go because “that’s just how she is.” Well, I was done letting it go. I was done playing nice. I was held accountable for every damn word I said. Marge deserved equal treatment.
“No, I don’t. Your court summons made it clear what you think of my parenting skills.”
“I didn’t come here to start any ugliness, Libby. I just wanted to bring Danny some of my chicken soup. It always made Rob feel better when he was sick.”
“Danny is not Rob. He’s a different little person entirely.”
Marge stared at me with a bewildered expression on her face and then suddenly turned chalk-white. She dropped her CorningWare as she sank heavily onto our front-porch swing. I caught the container before it hit the floor and handed it off to Kerrianne, who was waiting just inside the door. She made a wincing face as she whisked the soup away but did not offer an escape from this horribly awkward conversation.
“Do I need to call someone for you?” I asked.
“Is that—is that why you got yourself turned into a vampire?” Marge wheezed, fanning her clammy face with her hand.
“Please stop referring to it as getting myself turned,” I told her. “You make it sound like I contracted a social disease.”
“Is that why you wanted to be turned? Is that why you’re fighting us so hard on the custody case?” Marge amended. “Because you didn’t want us raising Danny? Because you think we’re trying to replace Rob with our grandson?”