“Not if I can help it. Good night. Sweet dreams.”
“They always are. They’re full of Elwyn.” Elwyn was her husband, dead for ten years, alive in her thoughts and dreams every day. “He carved our initials on the Eternity Oak the day we met, did I tell you that, Britt?”
She had. Fifty or sixty times. But this was pretty much how they said good night to each other most nights. It was their little ritual.
Mrs.Morrison tinkled her glass in farewell.
Britt smiled.
Then her smile faded. Poor cat. The woods were home to a number of feral felines, she knew. But then free-range felines had been taking their lives into their own paws for centuries.
She squared her shoulders, took another bracing breath, and typed “c—”
She gave a start again and clapped her hand over her heart when Skype starting beeping and booping.
She answered the call and the beaming face of her little nephew, nine years old and toothy, filled the screen.
“Hi, Auntie Britt!”
“Hi, cookie. What’s shakin’?”
His head disappeared from the screen and then his pajama-clad butt appeared. He shook it.
And then his giggling face reappeared.
She rolled her eyes. The wordbuttand anything butt-related still got a gratifyingly easy laugh from Will.
“I want to show you what I did with your drawing, Auntie Britt.”
She’d drawn Will as a monkey with a bright lively face, a dimple, wearing a little hat and a Christmas sweater and sporting a long expressive tail. She’d scanned the drawing and e-mailed it to him.
His face vanished from the screen.
To be replaced with an animated version of her monkey Will hopping up and down.
Rudimentary animation, butdarling.
She clapped, delighted. “That’s awesome, Will! You did that on your own? You are so darn clever. Good job!”
His face reappeared, grinning. “Will you send me another drawing, Auntie Britt?”
“Sure thing, monkey-butt. I have one of your mama. I made her a squirrel. Doesn’t she seem like a squirrel?”
“Shetotallydoes!”
She heard her sister’s voice raised in the background.
“William, it’s your bedtime! What are you still doing on the computer? Oh, hey, is that your aunt? Let me talk to her.”
Will noisily smooched the screen. “Good night, Auntie Britt!” He disappeared and her sister Laine’s face took his place. She and her nephew had the same sunny smiles and chin dimples.
“Hey! What’s new, Bippy?” Bippy was what her nephew Will had called Britt until he was about three years old. “Still have a half dozen jobs?”
“Half adozen? No wonder you only got four hundred on your math SATs.”
The curse of siblings: they both knew each other’s SAT scores and dozens of other minute details about each other’s lives that could be whipped out at a moment’s notice, for better or worse.
“I was out late with the quarterback the night before the SAT. Scored much higher then. Can I get a high five?”