Page 7 of The Lineman

I checked my watch. “I’m early, actually.”

“Not when you’re my age,” she shot back. “I don’t have time to be waiting on men.”

I shook my head and headed to the dining room, where she was setting two plates on a table covered in mismatched placemats. The tablecloth was the same pale-beige frilly thing she’d had covering her lacquered wood since the nineteenth century, and the runner was left over from Christmas—two Christmases ago.

The smell of homemade meatloaf and mashed potatoes filled the air, and my stomach let out a low, traitorous growl. Mrs. H might’ve been pleasantly crusty, but the woman could make Gordon Ramsay look like an amateur in the kitchen.

She gave me a knowing look. “Yeah, yeah, sit your big, beefy ass down. You work too damn much, Elliot, and you look like a man who’s lived off gas station sandwiches for the past week.”

I didn’t deny it.

Because I had, in fact, been living off gas station sandwiches for the past week.

I sat across from her, picking up my fork. “You’re a saint, you know that?”

“God-fucking-damned right, I’m a glorious angel with sparkly stars flying out my ass. Now eat.”

For a while, we ate in companionable silence. That was one thing I liked about Mrs. H—she never felt the need to fill the air with pointless conversation. She only talked when she had something important—or something naughty—to say.

Unfortunately, she always had something important to say when it came to my personal life.

“So, what’s new at work?” she asked, cutting into her meatloaf.

I shrugged. “Same old, same old. Fixed a few transformers. Had a guy nearly electrocute himself trying to cut a tree off his power line.”

She snorted. “People are stupid.”

“Yep, getting more so by the day.”

“Did he die?”

I shook my head. “Just scared himself shitless.”

“Shame,” she muttered. “We need to thin the herd.”

I nearly choked on my mashed potatoes. “Jesus, Mrs. H.”

“What? I’m old. I can say what I want.”

I let her have that one.

She chewed for a moment, then zeroed in for the kill.

“You ever gonna settle down, Hart?”

Here we go. Whenever she called me by my last name, I was well and truly in trouble.

I took a slow sip of water, pretending I hadn’t heard her.

She didn’t let me escape. “Don’t ignore me, boy. I don’t have time for that. I got, like, maybe five good years left, and I’d like to see you with someone before I kick the bucket. You could give me a quick grandchild or two, while you’re at it.”

“Grandchild?” I nearly spat. “I don’t know if I’m made for children, Mrs. H.”

“Pshaw!” She waved a bony hand, flinging mashed potatoes across the table. She cocked her head, examining the messy mash, then resumed her missile-like homing in on me.

“So?”

I sighed, bracing myself. “I date.”

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