The Last to Know by Wendy Corsi Staub

starving.”
    “I was here, Victoria. I was downstairs for all of two minutes. If you were hungry you should have waited until I got back up here. Look at that mess.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Victoria looks anything but sorry. Her lower lip is curled under in a “that’ll teach you to leave me alone” expression.
    Tasha grabs the sponge from the sink and bends to wipe up the mess. She puts the bottle of chocolate syrup back into the fridge and closes the door.
    Victoria promptly whines, “I wanted that.”
    “Well, you can’t have it,” Tasha snaps.
    Then, instantly feeling guilty, she softens her tone. “It’s just that you can’t eat that all by itself, Victoria.”
    After all, it’s not her daughter’s fault that the washing machine won’t work or that Jane Kendall is missing or that somebody brought up Fletch Gallagher today.
    “I’ll tell you what,” Tasha says, wetting a paper towel and gently wiping the chocolate smudges from her daughter’s face, “after I figure out what’s wrong with the washing machine, we’ll have some ice cream with chocolate syrup on top. Okay?”
    Victoria seems to mull that over. “With whipped cream?”
    “I don’t think we have whipped cream.”
    “I want whipped cream.”
    Tasha takes a deep breath. “Well, we don’t have any whipped cream. But,” she adds quickly when Victoria opens her mouth to protest, “we do have maraschino cherries.”
    “I don’t like those.”
    Don’t push me, kid , Tasha thinks grimly. Not today .
    Through clenched teeth she says, “Then you can just have sprinkles. Okay? You like sprinkles. Everybody likes sprinkles.”
    “Okay,” Victoria says, unexpectedly breaking into a smile. “I love you, Mommy.”
    “I love you, too, sweetie.” Tasha breathes a sigh of relief and pushes a black curl away from her daughter’s face.
    Victoria looks so like her daddy, with the dark hair, intense features, and pale skin. But she doesn’t have his chestnut eyes or his mellow nature.
    Her blue eyes are courtesy of Tasha. As for her intense personality—well, Tasha might not be as laid-back as Joel, but she certainly isn’t responsible for Victoria’s high-maintenance character. She probably has her mother-in-law to thank for supplying that particular trait to the family gene pool.
    Which reminds her: there was a message from Ruth on the answering machine when she got back from Starbucks earlier. She and Joel’s father, Irv, want to come over on Saturday— “if it’s all right with you, Tasha.” She always makes a big point of asking permission, as though she assumes her son and grandchildren will welcome a visit anytime, and it’s only her daughter-in-law potentially standing in the way of a happy get-together.
    Yeah, right. As though Tasha has ever told them not to come.
    In fact, in the early days of her marriage, she was the one who insisted to Joel that they see his parents every week. With her own family so far away, she had done her best to nurture the relationship with her husband’s family. She used to go all out, cooking and cleaning for their visits, making sure that they had the Cel-ray tonic Irv drinks, and Sweet ’N Low for Ruth’s tea. But after a while, when it became clear that her in-laws weren’t going to like her no matter what she did, she stopped knocking herself out.
    Now, when Ruth and Irv come over, they go out to eat, or get take-out.
    Of course, that doesn’t thrill the in-laws any more than Tasha’s homemade latkes and rugelach ever did. Last time they came, Tasha went to the kosher deli over in Mount Kisco to get a cold-cut platter and some rice pudding.
    “Oh, you have seeded rye,” Joel’s mother said when she picked up a piece of bread to make a sandwich.
    “Don’t you like seeded rye, Ruth?” Far be it from Tasha to call her “Mom.” Ruth had never asked her to, and she had never dared offer.
    “No, I buy the seedless. I always have. Joel only likes seedless,” she said