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“He claims I broke his heart,” Cilla said, punctuated
by the snap of the measuring tape as it retracted back into its case. She snickered
as she wrote down the measurements of the display window.
“Grandpa should have broken his head.” Melba chuckled.
“Our grandparents had that big old house the Gallery took over. We used to have
sleepovers, all the cousins, maybe once a month. Ernie decided he would play Romeo
and tossed rocks at the dormer windows to get Cilla’s attention. The problem is,
he used really big rocks and broke Grandpa and Granny’s bedroom window. The big
buffoon actually refused to pay to replace the window, because he claimed Granny
insulted his family, getting her landscaping rocks from someone else. Can you believe
that?”
“Ernie’s father and uncles had a landscaping business,”
Cilla explained.
“Well, that’s a chunk of Cadburn history I never
heard,” Tracy said, punctuated with a chuckle. “So Miss Cilla, you’re a heartbreaker,
are you?”
“There’s gotta be a heart to break,” she muttered,
and stepped over to the built-in counter that divided the front room in half, lengthwise.
She extended the measuring tape down the long side and paused to run her fingers
over the dings and gouges and dents and what certainly looked to Melba like burn
marks in the wood.
“Some common sense would have been nice, too,”
Melba added. “Remember the time he showed up to take you on a date, and he wouldn’t
take no for an answer because he had paid Boyd for the right to take you out? He
wanted exclusive access to you for the entire week.”
“Wait,” Tracy said. “Who’s Boyd?”
“Our money-grubbing cousin.”
“Makes those stereotyped ambulance-chasing lawyers
on TV look like Boy Scouts,” Cilla added. Then she giggled. “Remember the time he
tried to convince Aunt Myrna to join some pyramid scheme, and when she didn’t give
in fast enough, he stole the old glass piggy bank where she put her egg money? She
went chasing after him with her rolling pin and he fell going down the steps and
…” Her laughter faded into a sigh and she shook her head. “Oh, my, listen to me.
Gossiping.”
“It’s not gossip if you’d take Ginny’s advice
and put all those family memories into a book and sell it as humor,” Melba said.
“And get sued by three-quarters of the family
for embarrassing them.”
“They did it to themselves!” She snickered. “We
really should. Even if it’s just as a joke. Let’s talk to Charli Hall, since she
knows writing. Or Saundra Bailey. What do you say?”
“It might be fun,” Cilla admitted and chuckled.
