Don't Rhine on My Parade

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Nice shirt,” Mark noticed when I got home. He had arrived home early and somehow gotten his mother to leave. My hero. Seriously.

  I looked down at my t-shirt. It read “I suspect Nargles are behind it.” I had no idea what a Nargle was or what they would be behind. It was the only shirt for less than ten bucks at the convention.

  “Umm. Yeah,” I answered intelligently.

  He and Megan and Cassidy were snuggling on the couch reading story books. “I need to go get a shower. Can you hold down the fort?”

  He waved me off, “What does it look like I’m doing? By the way, my mom was worried that you are working too hard and left dinner for us.”

  I glowered. “Is that really what she said?”

  He smiled mischievously, “Of course not. But that’s what she meant.”

  “What did she really say?”

  “She said that balanced nutrition was important and she wanted her grandchildren to eat something that didn’t come out of the microwave at least once in a blue moon.”

  I made a face. “I cook!” I tried to remember the last time I’d cooked something on the stove.

  “I know, honey,” Mark said soothingly. “Now go get a shower and I’ll have dinner on the table when you get out.”

  “She’s evil,” I growled under my breath.

  “Who’s evil, Mommy?” Megan wanted to know.

  “No one, baby.”

  “Granny? You think Granny is evil?”

  “No!” I cried, “I didn’t say that! And you should never repeat what someone says to anyone else.”

  “Why not, Mommy?”

  “Yeah,” said Mark, causing trouble, “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said haughtily, “because I say so.” With that winning comment I exited to the shower.

  After all the excitement of the last few days, the evening was blessedly normal. We ate dinner. Megan and Cassidy got in a fight over who got to brush their teeth first. We had an incident with a dead spider in the hallway that turned out to not be dead and scared the living daylights out of me. I had to calm the girls down and explain that while Mommy might scream and run around the house when a spider jumped on her foot that didn’t mean that spiders were scary or bad, just that Mommy didn’t care for them.

  “You’re going to give them nightmares,” Mark whispered as he carefully scooped the spider up in a napkin and deposited it outside. I would have killed it; he was way too soft-hearted. But then, it hadn’t jumped on his foot. Barefoot too, I might add.

  We did baths and bedtime stories, and then hugs and kisses, then last sips of water, then more hugs and kisses, then trips to the potty, then more hugs and kisses, then threats that if anyone got out of bed for any reason the consequences would be dire.

  Finally we were alone. Sitting on the couch, snuggled up together, my head on his shoulder. In spite of everything, I was happy. I was loved, and cherished, I had a wonderful husband and two daughters who were the joy of my life. What was there not to be happy about?

  Well, my stupid brain replied, there’s the fact that you’ve been lying to your husband for years. In the last two days, you lied a bunch more, and snuck around breaking the law and almost getting killed, and you still haven’t told him that ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night are real. I sighed, happiness melting away before a tsunami of worry and guilt.

  “What’s wrong, babe?” Mark asked, rubbing my neck. “You still worried about your sister?”

  Sarah. Man. I hadn’t even thought about her today.

  “Yeah,” I lied again. “I just feel like I should do something.” Ok. That wasn’t a lie. I did feel like I should do something.

  “I thought it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity?”

  “The drinking and driving thing, yeah. But you saw her the other night. I can’t believe that my parents know she is dressing like that and behaving like that with boys!”

  “What?” Mark sounded puzzled. “Did I miss something? What other night?”

  “You know, at the coffee shop. She is way too young to be making out with boys! And she was dressed like a gothic whore!”

  Mark sat back and looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “The other night, at the coffee shop, after the movie, when we ran into Sarah and her boyfriend.”

  “Piper? What are you talking about? We didn’t see Sarah the other night.” He looked genuinely worried.

  I stared at him, mouth hanging open. How could he not remember?

  Suddenly I felt like a bolt of lightning hit my brain and fired simultaneous connections between multiple memories. He didn’t remember seeing Sarah at the coffee shop. Mrs. Starr changed her story after Sarah went by to talk to her. My parents never seemed to remember Sarah doing anything wrong or dressing inappropriately. I’d always thought that they were just more lenient since they were getting older, but … Holy Crap. Sarah had mental abilities.