Page 28 of Grown-Up Second Chance

I stood and joined Kathleen staring at the faucet.

“Are we having a séance or did someone die,” Liz asked as she came back up front.

“Water heater,” Kathleen and I said together.

“Oooh. Does staring at the faucet fix it?” she asked. “I’ll help.”

The three of stared for a full minute before Kathleen turned away and left the RV, the two of us trailing behind like little ducklings.

She retrieved her tool kit from its compartment, then opened a different compartment on the side of the rig. Then she started to stare at the water heater.

We crowded around her.

“Don’t you two have something else to do?” she asked.

“Well, I do have to go shopping this morning,” Liz said. “Since it looks like I’m not getting a shower, I could go now.”

“Good, take Diane with you.”

“I don’t need to go shopping.”

Kathleen turned on me, using the expression I’m quite sure had quelled any thought her children had had of rebellion.

“I’ll go with her,” I said.

“Good idea.” Kathleen turned back to the water heater.

Liz and I went inside to make a list.

~ ~ ~

When we returned an hour later, Kathleen was still at the water heater, but she was surrounded by four men, including Henry, who were pointing, talking, and shaking their heads at each other. We stowed the groceries, then Liz said she was going to take the car and go to a small space she’d rented in town where she could paint.

“How did you ever find it?” I asked her.

“There’s an app for that,” she said. “Kind of like an AirBnB for artists.”

Of course there was. There was an app for everything these days. I wondered when someone would build one that our parents logged us into when we were born, and it guided us through life for the rest of our days.

Maybe it would be smarter in the affairs of the heart and I would have married Joe instead of Larry.

As if I’d conjured him, Joe wandered into our site with his coffee mug in hand. He looked at the small group by the water heater, grinned, and sat down to observe the action.

I grabbed my own coffee.

“So you think you can come into our site and have a seat?” I asked after sitting down next to him. “Didn’t you read the list of rules?”

“There seemed to be plenty of interlopers here already,” he said. “Watching Kathleen do her stuff is pure entertainment.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes I’d run into her at Murdoch’s back in Butte. The first time it happened, she snared me. Gave me an idea of what she wanted to do, then asked my opinion. Of course, any time a man offers an opinion to a woman at a hardware or ranch store, there’s bound to be another guy with a different one. Kathleen would get us all going, listening carefully. See? Like she’s doing now.”

Sure enough, my sister was paying close attention to what one of the men was saying. I could almost see her taking mental notes. Kathleen had a prodigious memory, even better than mine when she chose to use it. While she didn’t remember odd facts, she remembered important things, like when I owed her money.

Beside me, Joe started to chuckle.

“Who’s the bowlegged guy with the weird shorts?” he asked.

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