WidowsWickedWish by Lynne Barron

once more. And soon.
    “Elbows, Fanny,” Olivia gently admonished and Jack looked to
her daughter sitting nearly slumped over the table, her chin propped in one
hand, the offending elbow resting perilously close to her plate. With the other
hand she plowed her fork through a mountain of mashed potatoes.
    “I can’t eat all these potatoes,” the girl grumbled,
stabbing her fork into the peak before withdrawing her hand. The fork waved precariously,
a silver flag atop Mount Everest.
    “Perhaps next time you won’t pile quite so much on your
plate,” Olivia replied calmly.
    “I know, I know,” Fanny grumbled as the fork listed left.
“There are starving children in France.”
    “Fanny’s grumpy,” Charlie piped up across the table.
    “What I want to know is what difference it makes to hungry
French children if I eat all my dinner?” Fanny asked of the table at large, her
fierce blue gaze raking them all before landing on her mother’s startled face.
    Mary Morgan tilted her head down, no doubt to hide her grin.
    “It seems to me,” Fanny continued, “that I can only feed
those Frogs if I don’t eat my dinner, if we all stopped eating, every single
English person, this instant, and packed up all of our food and sent it across
the sea to France.”
    “I don’t want to give my tatoes to a bunch of slimy, green
frogs,” Charlie replied with a frown.
    “Frogs are Frenchies,” Fanny replied, her words dripping
disdain.
    “Frances Marie,” her mother admonished. “That is a
derogatory term for the French people and not one that we use in this family.”
    “If we don’t, then why did I just now use it? Huh, why did I
do it? Riddle me that,” Fanny demanded just before her flag lost its efforts to
say upright. The fork clattered to her plate, sending a shower of gravy across
the tablecloth.
    “That’s more than enough, Frances Marie Gibbons.” Olivia
scooted her chair back and rose with dignity. “Make your excuses.”
    Fanny ignored her mother in favor of dipping a finger into
the gravy beside her plate and swirling it about. From his seat across the
table Jack couldn’t be certain but he thought she spelled out the word “Why” in
a sloping, rather elegant slant.
    “Excuse yourself, Frances, it is time for you to find your
bed,” her mother said, pulling her daughter’s finger from her gravy inquiry.
    “I know where my bed is,” Fanny muttered before yanking her
hand from her mother’s grasp and sticking her finger in her mouth.
    “Now.” Olivia eased Fanny’s chair back from the table.
    “I don’t want to go to bed,” Fanny cried, jumping from her
seat to stand glaring up her mother. “I am Lady Frances and I can do what I
want.”
    “I am the Countess of Palmerton,” her mother replied without
batting an eye. “Thus, I outrank you.”
    “Someday I’ll be a duchess or a princess or even a queen!”
Fanny put her hands to her hips and stomped her foot. “Then you’ll be sorry!
I’ll make you go find your bed! In the dungeon of my castle!”
    “I wholeheartedly welcome the day,” Olivia replied without
an ounce of the aggravation she must have been feeling coloring her words.
“I’ll likely need the rest after seeing you raised to such heights. But until
that day, you are simply Fanny and I am your mother.”
    Mother and daughter stared at one another, neither blinking,
long enough for Jack to turn to his daughter beside him, to see the wonder in
which she watched what threatened to become an all-out battle.
    “Oh, all right, but this is all your fault,” Fanny finally
muttered with a huff. “If you hadn’t allowed me to skip my nap, I wouldn’t be
as grumpy as a bear. What sort of mother lets her six-year-old daughter get
away with skipping her nap?”
    Olivia shot a glance across the table as if just remembering
that they had guests, guests who’d been gifted with a drama during dinner. A
blush rose to her cheeks but she held her head high, her gaze catching