Chapter
1
Cora Felton looked out the window and proclaimed, "I hate winter."
"That's nothing new," Sherry Carter said. "You also hate spring, summer, and fall. They're too hot, too wet, too windy, as I recall. Though not in that order."
"What, you thought I was going to call you on your wordplay? Let's remember who's the cruciverbalist here."
The cruciverbalist was Sherry. Cora, the Puzzle Lady, whose crossword puzzle column was nationally syndicated and who hawked breakfast cereal to schoolchildren on TV, was merely a front for her niece. Cora hated crossword puzzles, largely because she couldn't solve them and people were always asking her to because they thought she could. This tended to make Cora cranky regardless of the season.
At the moment there was no puzzle on the horizon, only snow.
"Now is the winter of our discontent," Cora said.
"Richard III? You're quoting Richard III?"
"Hey, I've been to the theater."
"Yeah, but Shakespeare?"
"It's the first line of the play. I didn't fall asleep till five minutes in."
Sherry shook her head. "Cora, why must you always pretend to be less educated than you are?"
"Give me a break. I'm the goddamned Puzzle Lady. I'm always pretending to be more educated than I am. It's exhausting, feigning an expertise you do not have. You know what a relief it is to let my hair down and be lowbrow?"
"Nonsense," Sherry said. "You do that all day long. You delight in shocking people with your earthy, just-one-of-the-guys approach to everything. It's only when the topic turns to crosswords you go into your shell."
On the front lawn, Sherry's daughter, Jennifer, was loping through the snow in large, happy circles. Buddy the toy poodle cavorted along behind. Every now and then an ear or the tip of his tail could be seen over the top of the snow.
"I should charge you a babysitting fee," Cora said.
"I should charge you a dog-walking fee. Aren't you glad Buddy has a playmate?"
"I'm glad he doesn't expect me to play in the snow."
"No, only Jennifer expects that."
"I'm a city girl, born and bred. Snow is that white stuff you can't go out until doormen shovel off the sidewalk."
"You're going to hole up inside the house until it melts?"
"That's a depressing thought."
"Everything's a depressing thought for you these days. You've been in a funk ever since you broke up with the policeman."
"We didn't break up. We live in different places. When I'm in New York I call him up."
"And when he's in Bakerhaven?"
"Hell has frozen over. He's a New York City cop. What would he be doing in Bakerhaven?"
Jennifer fell on her face. She stood up, plastered with snow from head to foot, and immediately started bawling.
"Guess I have to go get her," Sherry said.
"You have to get her anyway. Here comes the snowplow."
"Again? They were here yesterday."
"They're desperate for the work," Cora said. "It's all this global warming."
Sherry pulled on a jacket and boots. "Aren't you going to get Buddy?"
"Don't have to. He'll follow you."
Cora watched through the window as Sherry went out to rescue her child.
Jennifer stopped crying the minute Sherry picked her up, but protested mightily when Mommy started carrying her toward the door. She might have fallen on her face and got snow down the neck of her snowsuit, but that didn't mean she wanted to come in.
As Cora predicted, Buddy stayed with Jennifer, safely out of range of the blades of the snowplow. Even so, she should have gone out. She was getting lazy and complacent.
Something needed to be done.
Copyright © 2014 by Parnell Hall
