Rachel took the opportunity to introduce everyone to Dagne.
Everyone said hi, except for Jason, who sort of muttered at his toes. Then Chantal suggested Rachel needed help in the kitchen, but Rachel insisted she didn’t, as she was scared to let Chantal anywhere near her kitchen unsupervised, but the woman was determined. So Rachel, Chantal, Tiffinnae, and Dagne all tromped to the kitchen together, leaving Mr. Gregory and Jason to stare at each other.
It wasn’t long before they heard Sandy shout, “Happy Thanksgiving!”
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Rachel responded, coming out to greet her. Mr. Gregory was holding the door so she could maneuver in with her two grocery bags and her crutches.
“Hiiii-iiii!” Sandy sang out to Rachel.
“Jason, maybe you could give Sandy a hand with the bags?” Rachel asked. Jason came to his feet, slunk over to Sandy, and looked down at her foot.
“I thought the other one was hurt,” he said. Rachel had to agree with Jason—two weeks ago, it had been the other foot bandaged up.
“Oh it was,” Sandy cheerfully confirmed. “But would you believe I twisted this ankle so bad I can’t even walk?” She laughed. “Just as I was getting off these darn things! But then one night, I had one of my attacks; you know, and I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom— this medicine I’m on makes you pee every ten minutes and that’s so annoying—well anyway, I get up, but my sinuses were acting up so bad I could hardly think, and it was dark, and I was trying to find the wall switch, and I hit a stool, which made me sort of stagger back,” she said, now reenacting the tragic accident, “and wouldn’t you know it, my right ankle wasn’t strong enough to recover since I had hurt it so bad, so I twisted my left ankle trying to compensate for the right.”
No one said a word for a moment, just stood there, blinking at her in disbelief. “Girl, you a mess,” Chantal said from the dining room, shaking her head.
“I know,” Sandy said gleefully.
Chantal snorted, walked back to the kitchen with Sandy hobbling after her.
Jason looked at Rachel, still holding the bags. “What am I supposed to do with these?” he asked, holding the bags out to Rachel.
“I’ll take them,” she said, wondering what in the hell had possessed her to host Thanksgiving. At the moment, she couldn’t think of a worse idea, and glanced at the clock on the mantel. Half past one. Where is Flynn?
As she worked to prepare the meal, she kept one eye on the window for any sign of Flynn. The later the hour became, the clearer it became to her that he was not coming.
He was not coming because she had gone and blurted the L word, and had scared the shit out of him. That was so like her, to ruin everything by doing something stupid. And it didn’t help that Dagne sidled up to her more than once with a hushed, “Where’s Flynn?”
Rachel’s distraction caused her to forget the bread, and it wasn’t until Tiffinnae asked if anyone else noticed something burning that she remembered it—with a screech, she ran to the oven, pulled out two burned loaves of French bread.
The smell filled the kitchen, and the women set about opening windows, as Sandy directed them from her perch at the breakfast bar, and during the melee, Chantal’s gravy went bad and lumpy, and Dagne dropped her casserole, and Brussels sprouts went shooting across the floor.
The meal was quickly turning into a disaster. But then someone was knocking on the door, and Dagne beamed at her. “There he is!” she sang.
Yes, yes, it had to be him, he was just running late!
“Who?” Tiffinnae demanded.
Rachel was already on her way to the door and did not answer. She flung it open, all smiles, certain it was Flynn.
But it was not Flynn. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Valicielo,” Rachel said warily, noticing that his face was unusually red.
“Do you see what they did?” he demanded, dispensing with any greeting and gesturing wildly toward his house.
“Who did?”
“Those kids!” he spat.
With great reluctance, Rachel stepped through the screen door and out onto the porch and looked at his yard. His little herd of deer and his frog had all been turned upside down and the pinwheels were missing altogether. The only thing that had survived the assault was the concrete rabbit. “Yikes,” Rachel said, wincing. “What happened?”
“I’m calling the cops,” he spat.
“No, Mr. Valicielo, please don’t do that,” Rachel cried. “They’re children of my guests. We’ll make them come inside—”
“What’s going on here?” Chantal demanded behind her, and Rachel groaned as she walked out onto the porch.
“Those kids attacked my yard!” Mr. Valicielo shouted, pointing to his yard.
“Whose kids?”
“I don’t know! Kids! Kids from here!”