Once the other women left, she and Manny helped Edith clean up before they both climbed the stairs. Manny said good night to her just before walking into his bedroom and closing the door.
Ella entered her room, changing into her pajamas. It was just after ten o’clock, but she was too wired to go to sleep. She considered opening her laptop and trying to add some words to her current book, but her thoughts were too jumbled for that.
In the end, she crawled into bed with her phone and opened an app to play Triple Match.
She’d been just about to doze off when her phone rang, jerking her to wakefulness.
It was eleven-thirty, but when she saw it was Martha calling, she realized her sister had forgotten the time difference. It was only nine-thirty in Meridian.
“Martha,” she said, answering the phone. “Is everything okay?”
Martha was quiet, seemingly confused by the question. “Oh. It’s later there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I was just about to go to sleep. What’s up?”
“When are you coming home?” her sister asked.
Ella frowned…because that was the same question she kept asking herself. The problem was, the idea of returning home made her stomach hurt, while Edith and the Storms kept giving her amazing reasons—like the wine festival—to stay in Gracemont a little longer.
In the end, she hedged. “Oh. Um. I haven’t decided yet. There’s something coming up next weekend here that I’d like to attend.”
“Next weekend?” Martha sighed. “Could you come back earlier? Elijah has a work retreat next weekend and spouses are allowed to go. I could really use the break.”
Ella didn’t want to cut her visit short just to babysit her nephews, which she knew was a horrible thing to think, especially since she hadn’t seen them in months.
But Martha tended to overschedule the boys’ calendars, which meant Ella would be driving them from practices tofriends’ birthday parties to God only knew what else on Saturday, and then she’d be expected to take them to church and Sunday school and youth group, which was the literal definition of torture in Ella’s mind. She swore the minister always preached his sermon about sin and immorality and the wickedness of women directly to her whenever she was forced to take the boys.
In the midst of all that, she would also have to walk Martha’s huge, untrained dogs, water the garden, and do whatever “other duties as assigned” her sister left on the to-do list.
The wine festival sounded like a hell of a lot more fun.
“I’m afraid I’ve already committed to the other thing,” she said, hoping Martha didn’t ask her what she was doing. “I’m sure Mom and Dad would love having the boys for the weekend.”
Ella knew for a fact that wasn’t true. While Dad was over-the-moon with his grandsons, that didn’t mean he’d changed his stance on caring for kids. Which meant all the work would fall to Mom.
Martha huffed out an annoyed breath. “Mom can’t handle all three boys and their schedules, you know that.”
It occurred to Ella that perhaps this break in the silent treatment wasn’t so much an “all is forgiven” thing, as it was an “I need my free babysitter back” thing.
Before Ella could refuse again, Martha continued. “Don’t you think it’s pretty irresponsible to just take off on an extended vacation like this? I mean, don’t you need to work? And why do you need Gigi’s house if you don’t even plan to live in it?”
And there it was. The first mention of the will. Ella had wondered when that would come up. So far, all of Martha’s texts had been cheerful and friendly, containing pictures of the boys and her flowers and tiny bits of gossip about people in the church congregation.
“I’m working here. And I’m coming back,” Ella said. “But not by next weekend. You’ll have to make other arrangements.”
Martha started to speak, but Ella was tired and in no mood.
“It’s late,” she said, speaking over her sister, who was working herself up into a real tirade about Ella’s inability to understand Martha’s struggles, given her single/motherless status. In the past, Ella had always let her sister speak her piece, but honestly, given the way her sister had dumped her after Gigi’s death, she didn’t feel the need to play nice in the sandbox anymore. “I need to go.”
And then, for the first time ever, Ella hung up on her sister.
Silencing her phone, she flipped it face down on the nightstand in case Martha decided to call back or move her rant over to a text thread.
Ella lay in bed, trying to go to sleep, but her attempts were in vain.
It was nearly one a.m. before she finally gave up.
Thanks a lot, Martha.