Page 19 of Back in the Saddle

For me, Martha was goals.

And now was no exception, as both Eric and I watched her opening one of my cupboards, commandeering a glass, slamming the cupboard, going to the cocktail shaker that sat on the bar by Eric and me, then upending it over the glass.

Only a few drops of my Thanksgiving cocktail leaked into the glass, since Eric and I were drinking what had been in it, so she turned the shaker right side up and shook it demandingly at me.

I could take a hint, therefore I slid off my stool and rounded the bar.

I took the shaker from her, snatched up the jigger cups and started doing my thing before I asked, “Everything all right?”

“I love my sons. I love their wives…sort of,” she started.

My gaze flew to Eric, who was staring at Martha with an expression I couldn’t read, until he felt my attention and looked to me.

I was smiling.

He smiled back.

His packed its usual wallop, so I had to battle to keep mine in place.

Through this, Martha spoke.

Or complained.

“I love my grandchildren. But all of them together? For hours? Those women arranging platters and bowls like a surgeon navigates a chest cavity, and taking pictures of them so they can post it on social media and prove to all their friends they make the best homemade cranberry sauce?No.”

I was getting ice when I asked, “Are you all in your apartment?”

She had a one bedroom, like me.

In other words, not a lot of room and no dining room.

“That’s the other thing,” she stated. “We were going to eat in the courtyard. But by the time everything was ready, Alexis and Jacob were out there with their families, so one of my daughters-in-law said we should just join them. Regrettably, we did. And thus, I learned very quickly Alexis’s father is a horse’s ass.”

Oh shit.

I saw where this was going.

“Martha—” I started.

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I tried! Honest to Christ, I did. But he’s just that much of a horse’s ass.”

“You said something,” I surmised while measuring gin.

“Trust me, Jessica, you would too.”

I called them as I saw them as well, so she probably wasn’t wrong.

I put the lid on and began shaking the cocktail as I asked, “Why are you up here?”

“For your liquor,” she answered.

Huh.

“Spill,” I pushed.

She blew out a breath and spilled.

“Well, me laying it out to that horse’s ass set Alexis’s mother in a tizzy, anddo notask me how, it seems the nature of things, but one woman’s tizzy set off a chain reaction to other women’s tizzies, so we had a table full of women in a tizzy. All except Alexis, who backed me up, and Jacob’s mom, who laughed through the whole thing.” She nodded her head smartly. “I like that one. She’s got her head on straight.”

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