Something Old - Dianne L. Christner [93]
“Is that awful woman gone?”
“Yes. You’re safe now.”
Minnie nodded obediently. “Wait.” She stuck her hand through her torn bodice and withdrew another smaller covering, thrusting it forward like a great prize.
Jake blinked. She did have Katy’s covering in her bra! How in the world?
He narrowed his eyes. “Grams, what did you do?”
“She’s a wildcat! Do you want it or not?”
He obviously wouldn’t get to the bottom of it by talking to his gram. Katy would have to explain the situation. He tightened his jaw. Her version of it. Her sanctimonious version of it. At his grandmother’s contrite expression, he relaxed his jaw. “It’s all right, Gram.” He opened his hand, and she dropped it into his palm.
She tugged at her bosom. “It scratched me.”
Surprised, he noticed the pins. He’d never paid much attention to the little caps, although he’d seen plenty in his day. For years, his grandmother had designed and sewn them for others as extra income. He dropped the straight pins in his shirt pocket, but left Katy’s hair in the organdy cap and stuffed it into his jeans pocket.
“She’s gone,” Ann declared, entering the room with a sullen expression. “We scared her off.” She swept a painful gaze across the room, like he had earlier. Then she looked at Minnie, and her eyes softened. “You tired, Mother?”
“No. I think I’ll swing,” Minnie declared.
Ann sighed.
Jake handed the dress to his mother and left them, intending to get to the bottom of the incident. In the kitchen, he saw the bare table, the open closet door, the wet boots. There’d been plenty of action in a few hours’ time. He strode to the window and looked outside. Gone were all but the tire tracks of Katy’s Chevy. He turned and scaled the stairs, hurrying into the privacy of his room. Moving to the window that gave view of the barren fields, he speed-dialed Katy. But she wasn’t answering. Of course, she wasn’t, he fumed, jamming his phone in his pocket and striding to his door.
Stomping into her bedroom and jerking open the drawer of her nightstand, Katy took out a fresh covering and marched to the bathroom. She was taken back momentarily when she saw her disheveled state. Her face was bruised on the right cheekbone just below the eye. Well, now she matched Jake and David! She washed her face and quickly put herself to rights, pinning on the fresh covering.
“Ouch!” She stuck her thumb in her mouth. The physical pain subsided, but not the pain over the incident with Minnie, and worst, getting caught in the midst of it.
Her stockings had a hole in one knee. She removed them and washed gravel from the wound, placing salve over it and a bandage. Then she put on her slippers and went to the kitchen.
Not knowing how to rectify the situation, when Ann and Jake so obviously blamed her for everything, she got out a pint of chocolate ice cream. Absurd images flashed through her mind. Her hands shaky, Katy licked the tasteless dessert. Shame flooded over her. How had she lost control of a petite, eighty-five-year-old woman? An innocent babe who didn’t know what she was doing? And worst, why hadn’t she stayed to explain her actions instead of running away like a guilty criminal?
Because Jake betrayed her. Again.
Still she could have heeded the soft warning, the quiet voice that had warned her to cease struggling. She could pinpoint the exact moment when she’d let her anger take control, overstepped her bounds, and pressed ahead in anger instead of retreating in love. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Until the struggle. Then she’d chosen the same childish behavior as Minnie’s. But it had all happened so quickly, she rationalized. She would have quit struggling if she’d had only a moment more. She didn’t want Minnie to get scratched with the pins. But Ann had returned