They untangled themselves in a hurry, and Cam pulled open the door to grab the blanket from the backseat. “Go do your analysis, Wonder Woman. I’ll still be here when you’re through.”
~*~
“Get in here and give me a hug.” Lisbet Campbell opened the front door to Grammy Campbell’s house and pulled Norah in for a good, hard squeeze. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You just saw me last week.” Norah hung on, nonetheless, basking in the feeling of momness in her embrace.
“Yes, but we don’t know how much longer you get to stay, so every time I see you is like a fresh visit,” Aunt Liz said.
Since Norah had no answer to that question, she searched for a new topic. “Grammy painted.”
“Oh my goodness, yes.” The woman herself came bustling in from the kitchen, a vintage half apron tied around her slim hips. “Hello, sugar.”
Grammy was the only member of the Campbell clan shorter than Norah’s 5’4”. Norah could only presume that Grammy’s statuesque children were rocking some of her late husband’s genes. He’d passed before Norah had a chance to meet him. Grammy’s hug was like being embraced by a stick of summer-scented dynamite. How she managed to smell like honeysuckle in the dead of winter, Norah had no idea.
“She has us rearranging something every other weekend.” But Uncle Pete softened the gripe with a smile. Tall and broad, like Mitch, Uncle Pete’s blond hair had silvered completely since Miranda had first brought Norah home. “Come on over here, honey.”
Norah moved from one to the other, giving in to the urge to press her cheek to the aged flannel of his shirt. He smelled faintly of sawdust and motor oil.
She eased back. “You’ve been out on your motorcycle.”
Aunt Liz grinned. “We had a date for lunch. Rode up to Little Mountain for a picnic.”
“Wanna go for another ride?”
Grammy intervened. “Not until after dinner. It won’t be long. I just need to make the gravy.”
Norah sniffed, drooled a little. “Is that country fried steak?”
“And mashed potatoes, homemade biscuits, and the last of the purple hull peas from the freezer.”
All of her favorites. Norah mimed a kowtow. “I’m not worthy.”
“Of course you are. It’s not every day I get to cook for my other granddaughter. Come on back to the kitchen.”
The kitchen was a wide, spacious room with windows that overlooked what Norah knew was a long slope of yard. Not that she could see any of it now in the winter dark. Cherry cabinets stretched all the way to the top of the ten-foot ceiling and dark granite countertops gleamed. Mitch hunched over one, gingerly lifting a cloth napkin in a basket.
“Mitch, get your hands out of that bread basket!”
He jerked his hand back as if she’d slapped it. “But Grammy…”
“You can wait fifteen minutes without starving to death.” Grammy picked up a spoon and waved him away.
From the kitchen table Aunt Anita, Reed and Ava’s mom, waved hello. Several shoeboxes and photo albums were spread out across the surface.
“What’re you working on?” Norah slipped off her coat and peeked.
“Torture,” Reed said, a bouquet of silverware in his hand. “She’s organizing family photo albums, meaning she’s accruing blackmail material.”
“I’m doing no such thing.” Anita shooed him into the dining room to finish setting the table.
With a roll of his eyes, Miranda’s dark-haired cousin disappeared into the other room. Norah slid into a chair and reached for the nearest album. “May I?”
“Knock yourself out, hon.”
The first page was full of pictures from their childhood. A gap-toothed Miranda, maybe five or six, sat beside another grinning, tow-headed boy. “Is that Mitch? No, he’d have been much bigger than you at that age. Cam?”
Miranda came to lean over her shoulder. “Yeah, back then, people often mistook us for twins. We’re only three months apart.”