Page 17 of Horn of Plenty
“I thought you were going to forward the email I sent you to the printer,” she added, sharing a perplexed look with her broody farmer.
Sally released a heavy sigh. “You and Cal have been so busy preparing for today. I didn’t want to bother you. And it was an easy edit. I just popped it into the photo editor program and added another square for our booth,” the woman finished with a wave of her hand.
Mabel shared another mystified glance with Cal. She’d been surprised when Sally indicated that she was happy to forward the email to the printer after the council approved the design. When the heck did the old Young sisters learn to edit photos?
“Your booth?” Cal pressed. “I didn’t think you had a booth. I thought the Martinez farm was going to take care of selling your pies?”
Another good question! What were the sisters up to?
Sally’s look of worry dissolved into a wide grin. “Yes, they’ve got all the pies. But we have another booth—a horoscope and future predicting booth.”
Sweet Jesus!
For what seemed like the millionth time, Mabel shared another stunned look with Cal.
“Betty came up with it!” Margaret added. “We’re going to predict people’s futures based on their horoscope and charge them five bucks to do it!”
“Mm-hmm,” Betty chimed.
Mabel stared at the square on the sheet containing a few Zodiac symbols, then read the copy beneath the image. “Meet the old Young sisters and learn your destiny.”
“You know about people calling you the…?” Cal trailed off, looking awfully guilty.
“The old Young sisters, thing?” Margaret supplied like the cat who ate the canary.
“Yeah,” Cal answered.
The sisters chuckled.
“Oh, honey! Of course, we know,” Margaret conceded. “We run the only diner in town. We’ve been here our entire lives. We know everything.”
“Everything?” Cal repeated with a thread of trepidation.
Betty leaned forward and waved him in. “Everything,” the women whispered like an incantation.
Mabel stared at the sisters and swallowed hard. Did they know about her and Cal? Were the old Young sisters involved in witchcraft? Could they read minds? She shook off the ridiculous thought. But Betty was eyeing her pretty closely like she suspected something.
No! They were three nice old ladies who read a lot of astrology and believed in old wives’ tales—and, it appeared, had become proficient with graphic design. It was a stretch, but it could happen. Her gaze flicked back to the stack of assports. Take away the whole missingPdebacle, and Sally had done an amazing job on the design.
“You really did this yourself, Sally—on the computer?” she asked. She had to double-check.
“Sure did,” the woman answered, patting her coif of gray bobbed hair.
Mabel shook her head in disbelief. “I’m impressed you were even able to open the file. Back when I used to work here, you guys never used a computer. You even despised the credit card machine.”
“That’s because we didn’t understand it,” Margaret replied. “Now, we do.”
“That’s right,” Sally said, nodding. “A volunteer at the library started teaching computer classes to the seniors. We all picked it up lickety-split. You should have seen—”
“Sally,” Margaret interrupted. “Mabel and Cal don’t want to hear about what a bunch of senior citizens do at the library, and we’ve got to get to work fixing these farmers’ market passports. There’s room. We can just write in the letter P. It won’t be perfect but…”
“It’s better than leaving it as assport,” Betty deadpanned with a wry grin.
“We don’t have to change every single one of them, do we?” Cal asked, surveying the giant stack.
Mabel sucked in a tight breath as anxiety panged in her chest. She hadn’t shared this nugget of information with Cal yet.
“We probably do,” she answered with a slight wince.
