A Dutiful Wife(Barry) Seventeen year-old Ralph Baxter stepped over the threshold into his sister’s bedroom late one evening and gently closed the door behind him. “Granny Baxter’s remarrying. She hasn’t picked the date yet, but plans to tie the knot within the next few weeks.”

Faye was lying on the bed with her nose buried in a history book. Her sixth grade class was preparing for a test on the Indian Wars during the colonial period. Several pitched battles were fought just over the Massachusetts state line in nearby Rhode Island. In 1675 a band of Wampanoag warriors raided the border settlement of Swansea, massacring the English settlers, setting off the brutal King Phillip’s War.

“Granny Baxter’s been a widow for almost two years now,” Faye observed finally poking her nose out from behind the book. “She still dresses in black and goes nowhere except to church and the supermarket.” Faye turned her attention back to the Indian atrocities.

Ralph brushed a sweatshirt off a chair and sat down heavily. The boy had always fashioned himself something of a comedian, a practical jokester, but what he mistook for droll, cutting-edge humor usually fell short of the mark. He had a tin ear for the ridiculous – the silly, slapstick, goofy aspects of the human comedy. Humor was never his strong suit; he always loused up the punch lines.

A minute passed and, after learning that King Phillip, the Wampanoag chief, had been drawn and quartered with his head mounted on a stake, Faye laid the book aside a second time. “Why are you still in my room?” She was only half way through the chapter and still had a math project that needed attention.

“Granny Baxter said, ‘I was always a dutiful wife’”, Ralph repeated his grandmother’s word’s verbatim. “‘Forty-five years I cooked, cleaned and raised the children. Now, in my twilight years, an opportunity presented itself and I won’t be denied.’”

Faye was becoming frightened. If this was a joke run amuck, a carefully staged prank played out at her unwitting expense, Ralph was doing a masterful job concealing his end game. “That word… what does it mean?”

“Which one?”

“Dutiful.”

“It means conscientiously or obediently fulfilling one’s obligations.”

“Who exactly is Granny Baxter marrying?”

“When I stopped by unannounced for a visit this morning,” Ralph recounted in an in an offhand manner, “a bald-headed guy was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee in his plaid underwear.”

It took Faye a good minute to digest the information. “Do Mom and Dad know?”

Her brother wagged a shaggy mop of brownish hair from side to side. “They know nothing at all.”

* * * * *

After Ralph left the room, Faye found it impossible to concentrate on much of anything except her impetuous, love-struck grandmother. Tossing the history book on a bedside table, she located her brother in the kitchen sifting granola into a small bowl. She waited while he drizzled a film of light cream over the cereal. “What else?” she demanded.

Ralph stirred the grains with a spoon and watched as the ivory cream bled into the oats. Her brother had the strangest, atavistic rituals! Carrying the bowl to the table, he tentatively tasted the food before adding another dollop of cream. “Granny Baxter’s giddy as a teenager” “Not just happy,” he qualified, “but the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”

“But she’s been morbidly depressed since Grandpa Jack died.”

“Not anymore,” Ralph insisted, “and Mom’s birthday is the week after next.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” His sister was still trying to come to terms with her grandmother’s bizarre romantic escapade.

“The hairless creep in the plaid underwear will be joining us.”

“The new boy friend?”

“New lover, lech, fiancé, Don Juan or whatever the hell he is.”

“Cripes!” Faye sat down across from her brother. The cereal bowl was empty and Ralph was finessing the last few crumbs of granola onto the spoon. “From what I gather, they’re already living together.”

* * * * *

The following Saturday Ralph and his sister visited Granny Baxter. They found her in the back yard raking leaves. Throwing the tool aside, she hugged and kissed the grandchildren. “I want you to meet a special friend.” Over by the rock garden an elderly gentleman in baggy shorts and a flannel shirt was stuffing yard waste into a plastic bag.

“Bernie Mangerelli,” the older man lumbered forward on rickety, sclerotic legs and pumped the girl’s hand energetically. He had weather-beaten features, limpid, pale blue eyes and a kindly, unassuming manner. “We’re tidying things up.”

“Enough cleaning for today!” Granny Baxter stripped her garden gloves off, stuffing them in a pocket.”Let’s take a break.” She led the way into the house and set a pot of coffee on to boil.

“You’re retired?” Ralph queried as his grandmother laid out the cups and saucers.

“Ten years now,” Bernie rubbed his jaw ruminatively. “Sold women’s underwear… unmentionables, along with lingerie throughout the Midwestern states.”

Ralph thought the joke in decidedly poor taste, until he realized that the man with the hairy earlobes and silvery moustache was speaking in earnest.

“It was a small, regional distributorship,” he added as Granny Baxter set out a pound cake and began pouring the coffee. “Nothing grandiose… just enough of a living for a confirmed bachelor to muddle his way through the better part of an uneventful life.”

“Did he tell you how we met?” Granny Baxter slid into a seat next to the older man. “Bernie and I were chums, best friends through middle school,” she continued. Granny Baxter sipped at her coffee. “Of course, that was light years before I ever laid eyes on your grandfather, may he rest in peace.” A satisfied contentment arched the corners of her lips at an upward angle as she reflected on decades of being the ‘dutiful’ wife.

Granny Baxter shifted in her seat and for a fraction of a moment, Ralph caught sight of his grandmother’s mottled hand beneath the kitchen table clutching Bernie Mangerelli’s pudgy fist. Was the gesture maudlin or poignant? He couldn’t be sure.

That they were already sleeping together was fairly obvious, but something inchoate was present in the easygoing, low-keyed communion of spirits. It seemed as though the ardent couple had clearly picked up where they left off forty years earlier, their fervent first-love-revisited resembling a vintage wine that only mellows becoming far richer with age. All Ralph’s preconceptions about romance, the birds and the bees, had been blown to smithereens.

“Midway through our senior year,” a somber solemn serenity wormed its way into Granny Baxter’s voice, “Bernie’s father was killed in a hit-and-run accident and his mother relocated the family with relatives in Kansas, two thousand miles away.” She swallowed hard and brushed a strand of silver-gray hair from her eyes. “That move put the end of our fairy-tale romance.”

“A month ago,” Bernie picked up the narrative, “I heard about your grandmother being widowed from a mutual friend and travelled east to see if we couldn’t resurrect what was lost due to an unfortunate roll of the dice.”

“You want to marry my grandmother,” Faye blurted, not so much as a question but an unassailable statement of fact.

“Yes, as soon as possible,” Bernie replied.

*****

Later that evening, Granny Baxter went to visit her son and daughter-in-law. “I was reacquainted with an old friend,” the older woman spoke in an unhurried, clipped tone, choosing her words with frugal efficiency. “We’ve fallen in love and plan to marry.” She paused to let the news settle in.

The Baxters, who were sitting on the living room sofa with their hands folded in their laps, smiled weakly. “This seems rather rash,” her son muttered and glanced briefly at his spouse for moral support.

“Bernie and I intend to wed by the end of the month and honeymoon in Europe.” She ignored his son’s previous remark, rushing roughshod onto the next topic. “Neither one of us has ever been out of the country so it seemed like a lovely way to begin our a life together.”

“Begin a life together,” Mrs. Baxter repeated dully. “When do we get to meet this fellow?”

“I’ll bring my new husband, Bernie, to your birthday party.”

“He’s not you husband yet,” her daughter-in-law corrected

“No, that’s true,” Granny Baxter replied with brittle certitude. “I should have said ‘future’ husband. I misspoke. It was a semantic faux pas, nothing more.”

Granny Baxter hastily rose to her feet. “Any questions?”

“This is all rather sudden,” Mr. Baxter mumbled as he trailed his mother into the foyer.

Granny Baxter’s malleable features cycled through a range of emotions before finally settling on wistful nostalgia. “If you were dying of thirst in the desert, what would you prefer… a diamond or glass of water?” In response to her son’s dumbfound expression Granny Baxter added, “It’s the eighteenth century economist, Adam Smith’s, famous diamond-water paradox.”

“I’m not familiar with any such thing,” Mr. Baxter mumbled disjointedly.

“Although water is more useful in terms of survival, we always place a higher value on the precious the gem.” The older woman nodded several times, affirming the inherent candor of what she was saying. “A diamond isn’t essential for living, but it’s valued more than a cup of water, except of course when you’ve got nothing to drink in the middle of a scorching sea of sand.”

You’re not making any sense!” Mr. Baxter sputtered.

“Two years I’ve been alone.” The woman swung the front door ajar and stepped out on the landing. “I’ve mourned long enough. Now it’s time to resume living.”

* * * * *

Following her husband’s death from a coronary embolism, Granny Baxter had tumbled down a bottomless pit of heartache and hurt. The family took her for counseling with a psychiatrist, Dr. Wasserman, but a year later the woman was no better off than when she started therapy. Ralph accompanied his parents to the consultation in late august. From the outset Ralph disliked the sinewy, sallow faced psychiatrist, who had a penchant for twenty-five cent, clinical terms that stretched a block-and-a-half long.

“Mrs. Baxter suffers from an involutional melancholia,” Dr. Wasserman spoke in a rather dry, detached monotone. “Her depression is both endogenous and of idiopathic origin.” He went on to explain that involutional melancholia was a condition affecting mainly elderly people. “Symptoms include marked anxiety, moodiness, despondency, agitation, restlessness and anorexia.” The doctor rattled off the terms in a glib, offhand manner as though reading from a manual of clinical abnormalities.

When the doctor finally stopped speaking, Ralph’s mother asked, “Idiopathic… what does that mean?”

“Of no known origin,” the doctor clarified. “We don’t know why your mother-in-law feels so awful.”

“Her husband died,” Mr. Baxter interjected. “She lost her soul mate. They were inseparable… married nearly half a century.”

The psychiatrist either missed the undercurrent of sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “Yes, but that was over a year ago and she’s still distraught, overwhelmed with grief.”

“What do you suggest?” Mrs. Baxter interjected. “We can’t go on like this. She isn’t eating properly, neglects her physical appearance… refuses to go out in public or visit friends.”

Dr. Wasserman removed his wire-rimmed bifocals and massaged the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. Rising from the leather chair, he went to the doorway and placed a hand on the wall switch. “There is a component of the brain that manages moods much like an electrical switch controls the flow of electricity in a light fixture.” He depressed the switch and the room went dark. “The mind has to oversee a multiplicity of moods and dispositions – happiness, despair, contentment, rage, humor, grief…” As he enumerated the endless possibilities, the doctor toggled the switch up and down. “Sometimes a switch short circuits… gets stuck in the off position,” he said with a dramatic flourish, killing the lights, “and the person is unable to break free of dark moods.”

“What then?” Ralph ventured.

The psychiatrist returned to his desk. “Since the antidepressants we’ve tried over the past few months haven’t produced any appreciable results, you might want to consider ECT… electroconvulsive therapy.”

Mr. Baxter’s brow furrowed. “She’s seventy years old!”

Dr. Wasserman’s features remaining blandly impassive. “When all else fails, it’s a viable option,” he countered. “Sometimes the only option.”

“How much electricity are we talking?” Ralph’s mother spoke very slowly as though each syllable weighed her tongue down.

Dr. Wasserman made a pitter-patter sound, drumming his fingertips on the edge of the mahogany desk. “A hundred-eighty to four hundred sixty volts are fired through the brain for a tenth of a second up to six seconds, either from temple to temple, which is a bilateral approach or from the front to back of one side of the head.” Having said this he flash a supercilious smile. A nasally voice erupted over the intercom alerting the doctor that his next patient had arrived. Rising, he accompanied them to the door. “Give it some thought.”

*****

When the Baxters returned home, Ralph’s sister, Faye, who had also accompanied the family to the meeting, took her brother aside. “That screwball Dr. Wasserman is about as old as dad.”

“What of it?”

“The shrink’s mother would be about the same age as Granny Baxter.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wondering if he would be so willing to juice the old geezer … strap his own goddamn mother down in an electric chair, place a metal cap on her head and fry her freakin’ brains!”

“They use a hospital bed not an electric chair,” Ralph brought his sister up short, “and nobody gets their brains fried.”

“Yeah well, I seen a movie where they stuff the patients’ mouths with gauze pads so their teeth don’t crack when they flip the stupid switch!”

Idiopathic, endogenous, melancholia, involutional. Dr. Wasserman spoke a grandiose foreign language – cerebral snake oil - that hinted at salvation but ultimately guarantied nothing. Maybe zapping Granny Baxter’s seventy-year-old brain with four hundred volts of electricity for six solid seconds – to Faye, that seemed like an eternity - would set things right in the world, or maybe it would turn her gray matter into Swiss cheese.

For his part, Mr. Baxter carried on in a manner neither Ralph nor his sister had ever witnessed before. Their usually mild mannered father kicked over the wastepaper basket, pounded his fisted on the dining room table so hard the walls shook and even used a four-letter word when discussing his feeling about the eminent physician. In the end, the parents decided to cancelled the next scheduled office visit and manage Granny Baxter’s misery on their own.

*****

Bernie Mangerelli was nothing like Grandpa Jack.
A stocky, heavy-set man with a ruddy complexion, Granny Baxter’s first husband was a gregarious, slap-you-on-the-back, insufferable talkaholic. He was brash and full of fun with a risqué and, at times, foul-mouthed sense of humor. He was a genuinely nice guy.

Bernie Mangerelli, on the other hand, was soft-spoken and unassuming. The man who sold unmentionables could sit quietly on the back porch nursing a cup of coffee and watching a pair of cardinals pecking thistle seeds from the bird feeder for the better part of an hour without losing interest or feeling the need to do much of anything. Thrust in a similar situation, Grandpa Jack, the type-A personality and overachiever, would be jumping out of his skin.

As he observed the newlyweds, Ralph sensed that his grandmother cherished Mr. Mangerelli slightly more than her first husband, but only because he was absurdly sentimental and doting. Grandpa Jack, the real estate mogul, possessed the impetuous swagger and penache of a self-made man. Bernie Mangerelli displayed the self-effacing humility of a guy who hawked women’s underwear for forty, hardscrabble years. Granny Baxter embraced each man with his unique virtues, peccadilloes and eccentricities. To her credit, she would proved a ‘dutiful’ wife to both the living and the dead.

* * * * *

Following the honeymoon – the newlyweds toured Paris, Italy and Southern Germany with a brief trip across the channel to London – Granny Baxter and Bernie flew home and settled into their new life together. They returned with the cheeky bravura of a couple of wizened trailblazers. The following week Ralph’s father went to spend time with his mother but returned an hour later.

“What happened?” his wife pressed.

“Nothing I care to discuss,” he muttered gruffly. Faye, who was sitting in the kitchen nibbling at a plate of scrambled eggs, put her fork down and cocked an attentive ear to one side. Mrs. Baxter followed her husband as he trudged upstairs and disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door discretely behind her.

“Geez!” Sliding her chair away from the table, the girl crept into the den, where she strategically placed an ear against the far wall which abutted the master bedroom. In a rage, Mr. Baxter was talking rapid fire, running all his words together in an unintelligible heap. The man kept repeating the phrase, ‘diamond-water paradox’ over and over again, and Faye came to understand that Grandpa Jack was the glittery jewel, Bernie Mangerelli the worthless glass of water.

“The unmitigated gall of that man!” Mr. Baxter seethed.

A moment of silence ensued. “What will you do, Stewart?”

Mr. Baxter lowered his voice and mumbled something resembling a threat, but Faye could only pick out an isolated word or two. “Yes, I understand,” Mrs. Baxter was beginning to sound equally distressed, “but, under the circumstances, what recourse do we have? From a practical standpoint, what can anyone do?” Faye’s father launched into another indecipherable rant, catapulting the young girl’s adolescent brain into an opaque fog.

Bang! Mr. Baxter smashed his fist on the bureau, causing his daughter to leap away from the wall. “I’m not going back there… won’t return to that house until my mother comes to her senses.”

*****

Faye hunted down her brother in the back yard near the shed, where Ralph was adjusting the brakes on his ten-speed bike. She told him about their father’s abortive trip to Granny Baxter’s. Reaching for a quarter-inch wrench Ralph loosened a locknut screw securing the rubber brake pad and slid the rectangular section in line with the front wheel’s metal frame. “What else… what else did Dad say?”

“I dunno… he was talking crazy.”

Ralph scowled and his features dissolved in a constipated expression. Balling his hand into a tight fist, he rapped the knuckles two, three times on the side of his sister’s skull. “Think hard. What else did they discuss?”

“I told you everything,” Faye insisted,” except for a couple of weird phrases that didn’t hardly make no sense… stupid stuff.”

“What stupid stuff?” Ralph tightened the nut fixing the brake pad permanently in place.

Faye massaged an earlobe meditatively. “Gold digger… ne’er-do-well. He shouted that Granny Baxter’s new husband was little more than a good-for-nothing gold digger and ne’er-do-well.”

Ralph flipped the bike right-side up and gingerly pumped the brakes several times. “That’s nice!” Faye wasn’t sure if her brother was referring to the refurbished brakes or her father’s commentary on the human condition. “After lunch,” he added, “we’ll take a trip to see Granny Baxter and her gold digger, ne’er-do-well second husband but don’t say anything to the folks.”

* * * * *

Around four in the afternoon, Ralph and Faye arrived at their grandmother’s home, where the older woman was laying out an assortment of pastry supplies on the kitchen table. “I’m baking a German apple strudel.” She went to the pantry, removed a plaid apron and handed it to the girl. “You kids can help prepare the fruit filling.”

The woman pointed to a bowl of glistening raisins. “I’m already soaking the fruit in rum to spice things up.” She handed a paring knife to Ralph. “Peel and core the apples,” she instructed, indicating four Granny Smith apples, “while your sister and I get the dough ready.”

“Why green apples?” Ralph asked.

“The tart flavor balances the sweetness of the pastry.” Granny Baxter waved a taut index finger melodramatically overhead. “There’s one thing we almost forgot.” She removed a lemon from the vegetable bin in the refrigerator and handed it to Faye. “Grate a tablespoon of zest then add the rind and juice to the mix.”

*****

Granny Baxter had a clever trick ensuring that the pastry dough would stretch paper-thin without tearing. She placed a small pot of water on the stove to boil and, once the water was heated, emptied the liquid into the sink and dried the metal with a towel. After the flour, egg and water had been stirred into a gooey mass she transferred the freshly-made dough into the heated pot and replaced the cover. “The dry heat,” she explained, “will make the dough more elastic and pliable, while we prepare the rest of the ingredients.”

In a separate bowl they mixed the vanilla extract, brown sugar, rum-soaked raisins and diced apples into a sticky-sweet lump. Granny Baxter melted a half stick of butter, handed it to Faye along with a small pastry brush, then placed several sheets of parchment paper on the table. “Coat those sheets with butter.” When Faye gave her a quizzical look, she added, “We’re going to thin the dough with a rolling pin. The butter allows us to peel the pastry crust away from the parchment paper without tearing.” Setting the oven to three-seventy-five, she returned to the table.

While the women were preparing the crust, Ralph drifted off in search of Bernie. His newly-minted grandfather was in the living room reading a hardcover book, which he set aside as soon as Ralph appeared.

“My father had a fight with Grandma,” he said in a frank, no-nonsense tone. “Do you have any idea what it was about?”

“Yes, but shouldn’t you be going directly to the source?”

“I came to you,” he returned bluntly, “because I figured neither one would tell me much of anything.” Ralph ran an index finger over the glossy book cover. “The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton… is it any good?”

Bernie shook his head energetically. “A literary classic… not read much anymore but a classic nonetheless.” “The novelist, Mrs. Wharton, came from one of the wealthiest families in New York. That was back in the early nineteen hundreds. Her father was a millionaire… a multi-millionaire.” Bernie clearly much preferred talking about fictional works than domestic unpleasantries.

“What’s the book about?”

“Rich people and how they make themselves miserable, chasing after things that aren’t terribly essential.”

Ralph opened the cover and flipped through a half dozen pages. “You’re not going to tell me why Granny Baxter and my father are feuding?”

“No, it’s not my place,” Bernie countered affably. Rising to his feet, he added, “Let’s go see what the womenfolk are up to.”

Before they had gone a handful of steps Bernie changed his mind. “We can join them in a moment. There’s something I want to show you.” The older man led the way into the back yard where an arbor fashioned from pressure-treated lumber was overrun with a thick mantle of clematis, the rich profusion of purple and eggshell-white blossoms having long since vanished with the November frost.

Behind the wooden structure an aged apple tree leaned at a precipitous angle. A huge limbed resting on the topmost beam, it almost seemed as though the sturdy arbor was keeping the tree in its decrepitude from collapsing altogether. Bernie plucked an apple from a low-hanging limb. With a penknife that he pulled from his pocket he carved a slice. “Taste this.”

Ralph tasted the fruit, a perfect balance between sweet and sharp highlights. “That’s awfully tasty!”

“Yes, but do you know the story behind the tree?” Ralph shrugged. “Grandpa Jack planted it shortly after they married and moved here, but the uncooperative tree never bore fruit… a blizzard of ivory blossoms every spring but never any apples.”

“According to your grandmother,” Bernie continued, “Grandpa Jack was far too busy with his business dealings to properly prune the tree so it grew helter-skelter in all the wrong directions.” “Not a single decent crop in all those years!” he repeated emphatically. “Your grandfather wanted to take a chain saw to it, but your grandmother was adamant that the apple tree be left alone.”

Ralphs eyes brightened. “The fruit for the German strudel came from the tree?”

“Yes, a meager crop but more than enough for one delightful dessert.” Bernie peered up into the topmost branches. “That vertical new growth has to all be trimmed away as well as those scraggly limbs sloping at a downward angle. They drain nourishment away from the delicate fruit.”

“You prune fruit trees?”

“Your grandmother,” the older man sidestepped the question, “is a devout Catholic.” “She claims the half-dead, barren apple tree is a miracle… a blessing from the Almighty.”

“And what do you say?”

Bernie scratched the back of his neck then pawed at the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Traveling salesmen, as a rule, don’t spend much time contemplating theological abstractions, but I’d have to agree with your grandmother on this one.”

“She went through a bad time after Grandpa Jack died.”

“So I heard.”

On, off. On, off. On, off. On, off. A fleeting image of Dr. Wasserman flipping the light switch flitted through Ralph’s mind. “You were Granny Baxter’s salvation.”

“I came at an opportune time, that’s all,” Bernie said, distancing himself from personal heroics. “In some ways your grandmother was my salvation. She rescued me from a tedious and tiresome old age.” Having said this, Bernie pivoted on his heels and headed back into the house.

In the kitchen Granny Baxter was bent over the open stove, brushing melted butter over the strudel crust, while the room was filling with an intoxicating fruity aroma. “Just another ten minutes or so.” She eased the oven door shut and wandered over to the sink where Bernie had begun clearing the clean cookware.

“Dad came home in a foul mood earlier this morning,” Faye picked up where her brother left off. “What did you fight about?”

“An unfortunate and regrettable incident.” Granny Baxter grabbed a dish towel and began patting a freshly washed mixing bowl dry. “Nothing I care to talk about.”

The young girl would not be denied. “He called Bernie a gold digger and ne’er-do-well.”

Her grandmother winced and her eyebrows fluttered briskly. “Since he was in diapers,” Granny Baxter spoke with a droll, biting humor, “your father had a fatal flaw.” She paused to better organize her thoughts. “Your dad would lose his temper and spout all sorts of emotional gibberish. Five minutes later he’d feel contrite, but always too late. He never meant the half of what he said.” Granny Baxter took a deep breath, expelling the air in a thin stream through tightly compressed lips. “Poor Bernie!” She waved a hand theatrically in her spouse’s direction. “That wonderful man absorbed the bulk of your father’s misguided abuse.”

Bernie, who was listening attentively, glanced at the children. “No offense taken,” he responded in an upbeat, jovial tone. “During my working years, I suffered a whole lot worse.”

“Those awful things your father said… nothing could be further from the truth.” She rested a hand on Bernie’s shoulder. “My husband’s a resourceful man, accustomed to living within his modest means.”

*****

The German strudel emerged from the oven lightly browned to perfection.

Granny Baxter brought a carton of vanilla ice cream to the table. “I need a favor,” she said as she began slicing the loaf.

“Yes?” Ralph placed a forkful of desert on his tongue. All the delicious flavors – the lemon, rum-soaked raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and tart apples – had married, melded together and yet remained distinct.

“Grandpa Jack,” Granny Baxter continued with a dispassionate intensity, “was a bit of a braggart and insufferable self-promoter, but he could also be absurdly generous.” Her eyes swept right to left, including both children. “Before he died, he put aside a large sum of money in a trust fund for your future educations.” “Your father got the mistaken notion that, since Bernie reentered my life all that changed.” The older woman scooped a mound of ice cream from the carton and deposited it on Faye’s plate. “Tell your father that we intend to honor Grandpa Jack’s wishes. The trust will remain intact.”

Ralph stared at his empty plate. “Dad’s gonna feel guilty as hell.”

“And want to hurry over here,” Faye interjected, anticipating her brother’s train of thought, “to apologize for the horrible things he said about your new husband.”

“Apologies accepted in advance,” Bernie quipped with a congenial grin.

“No need for him to rush,” Granny Baxter observed wryly. “Let you father wallow in self-loathing and recrimination for another few days or so.” She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Anyone want seconds?”

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