Killer Reunion by G. A. McKevett Page B

ruckus in here?” Gran said, charging into the living room, a dish towel in her hand.
    When she saw her granddaughter draped across her furniture, writhing in distress like a cartoon blonde tied to a railroad track by a mustache-twirling villain in a long black cloak, she said, “Marietta, this had better be good, gal. You’d best have a powerful excuse for carrying on like a danged fool. And put your dress down and your legs together. We ain’t having no hootchy-kootchy girl shows in my front room.”
    Marietta made a half attempt at correcting her posture, but the mournful wailing continued. Between sobs, she said, “You don’t know what Savannah did, Gran. She totally annihilated my best pair of shoes.”
    â€œI know. I know. I saw.”
    â€œYou saw?” Marietta turned on Savannah. “You let Gran see them, but you won’t let me see them?”
    Savannah donned her saddest, most compassionate face. “It’s best,” she said, “if you just remember them as they were. Trust me.”
    â€œBut you let Gran see them! Maybe I can get them fixed.”
    Gran sat down abruptly on her chair, as though suddenly very tired. “Actually, Marietta, I saw one of them. And it was beyond help. You best work on gettin’ over it.”
    Marietta fixed Savannah with an evil eye. “She did it on purpose. She murdered my shoes.”
    Gran wiped her face with the dish towel, settled back in her chair, and propped her feet up. Then she said in a calm, sweet voice, which Savannah wished she could emulate at moments of high stress, “Miss Marietta, I’m gonna say this to you one time. You need to listen and listen good. ’Cause if I have to get up from this chair on your account and go cut a hickory switch, you’re gonna have something to bawl and carry on about.”
    Gran drew a deep breath and continued, “Girl, you gather your wits about you and mind your manners, or remove yourself from my house. Just as simple as that. You decide which it’s gonna be. Right now.”
    Marietta bounced up from the sofa, having gone from grief to indignant fury in an instant. She snatched her purse off the coffee table. “Well! I know when I’m not welcome! Talk about adding insult to injury!”
    As she marched toward the door, Gran added with equal grace and composure, “Okay. You’ve made your choice. And I’ll thank you not to return to my home until you’ve had a change of attitude.”
    Marietta’s exit was punctuated by a door slamming that rocked the house and rattled the glass knickknacks on a nearby shelf.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Savannah began. “I never meant to—”
    â€œOf course you didn’t.” Gran sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, looking oh, so weary.
    It occurred to Savannah that sometimes—times like these, when there were conflicts in the family—Gran actually looked her age. And that angered Savannah.
    The thought that her grandmother would be troubled at all, especially by something like a pair of stupid hooker heels, seemed wrong to Savannah on so many levels.
    â€œI can’t take it like I used to,” Gran said after a moment. “On the other hand, I reckon I could. But I choose not to.”
    Savannah sat on a chair near Gran’s, reached over, and took her hand between her own. As always, she was surprised at how soft the older woman’s skin was. Like a baby’s. And she wondered, as she always did, why it should be so, that human beings were their softest at the beginning and the end of their lives.
    â€œI don’t blame you,” Savannah said, stroking her grandmother’s arthritic fingers. “Marietta knows better. You taught her better.”
    When Gran opened her eyes, Savannah saw tears brimming in them, and she felt like her heart would break.
    â€œI tried to teach you all the same. The Lord above knows I did. But with