“What if I’m dead?’’
Favorite Sister had called in a panic. The Sad Girl knew exactly what she meant. It was a literal statement- not an existential question.

“Remember the cord wrapped around my neck at birth? And the Doctor working frantically to resuscitate me? What if I’m not me? What if the person who was supposed to be me died at birth and she just came home with another kid? What if I’m dead?”

The things that you think about at three in the morning instead of sleeping.

 

 

At some point towards the end of the summer, an incident took place that made the Sad Girl glad she and the Sad Boy were in Italy.

Baby Sister, as usual, was spending her Saturday with Favorite Sister and her family. The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe was going out for the day. She asked Favorite Sister to keep Baby Sister with her for the duration of the afternoon. She gave no reason but asked Favorite Sister not to return until she called to say she was home.

In the house were the Sister Who Shall Not be Named and Blarney Boy with their twins and Grandma resting with her broken arm. Blarney Boy, in need of an alternator for his car, was planning to go purchase the necessary part.

The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe and Pretend Father returned late in the afternoon.

The Sister Who Shall Not be Named, relieved of Grandma sitting, left with her family to enjoy the remainder of the summer day.

The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe called Favorite Sister. She was to bring Baby Sister home. The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe said she had something interesting to relate.

With a chuckle, she told a quizzical Favorite Sister that “Blarney Boy had taken the bait,” before she hung up the phone.

The dogs of war had been released.

It seems the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe, unbeknownst to anyone, had placed an unspecified counted and marked amount of cash in her bedroom hiding place. Upon returning, she recounted the money. The exact amount of money that Blarney Boy needed to fix his car was missing. The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe immediately accused Blarney Boy of stealing it.

Incredulous, Favorite Sister began to question her. Where did you put the money? How much was there? What makes you think Blarney Boy took it? Favorite Sister continued to question her in this vein. Her answers were ambiguous.

“I put the money in a spot… Not even your Pretend Father knew…”

She said a lot but never seemed to give a satisfactory answer.

It was related to the Sad Girl that the Pretend Father got a look of dread in his eyes.

The Sad Girl knows that look- his beautiful chocolate brown eyes open wide beneath his risen eyebrows. His head rapidly shakes back and forth in a “no” motion. His face and body language give him away. He will side with the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe even though he knows he shouldn’t.

The Pretend Father countered, the look etched in his facial expression, “Maybe Grandma stole it. She was home.”

The Pretend Father knew Grandma with the broken arm and thirty years in his home, did not steal any money. But, he put a crimp in the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe’s accusation. If he perceived something did not add up, he kept it to himself.

With a flash in her eye, the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe momentarily seethed in Pretend Father’s direction. Then she morphed her fury into a feminine frenzy of hysteria and shut him up.

There was a thief in the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe’s house! All the characters in this story believed her. You would have too.

The Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe began to recount many things she noticed but had never shared before.

At the onset of Blarney Boy moving in, before he was wed to the Sister Who Shall Not be Named, she noticed that random pieces of cutlery, a spoon here, a fork there, would be missing. Realize that this was not silver, just decent quality eating utensils. Even now, she declared, after every party that Blarney Boy attended, cutlery would be missing.

Additionally, all summer, the Woman with the Rock in Her Shoe would leave money to open the deli register in the morning on the kitchen counter next to Pretend Father’s wallet. It was never a specific amount but she had always counted it. When she picked it up again in the morning, it would repeatedly be short twenty dollars, thirty dollars, and sometimes as much as fifty dollars. She surmised she had counted it wrong. Yet, all summer she put the money on the counter, next to Pretend Father’s wallet.

Also, Blarney Boy spent an unusual amount of time up in the attic with his stored things. What was he doing up there for extended periods of time? And, why is Blarney Boy always sweating, even in the dead of winter?

It seemed that Blarney Boy, like Humpty Dumpty before him, was indeed going to have a great fall.

 

Goldilocks