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POLLY AND DORIS WERE getting along well enough, until Polly mentioned her aunt’s potato salad. She tasted Doris’s potato salad and said it was incredible, but she had to give her aunt’s recipe a higher rating.
Doris took the news okay, at first. Then all day, she’d poke at Polly. “What exactly is it that makes you say that? I can’t honestly be sure I’d agree with you, but there’s no accounting for taste. Do you know what other ingredients she adds? Where can I try this recipe? Is she selling it, or is that just your opinion? I mean, mine sells out here, so there’s that. Proof is all I’m saying, mine sells.”
Polly realized the mistake she’d made a second too late. All day Doris hounded her. After enough nudges, Polly snapped and shouted. “Will you leave me alone?”
Katy heard the words. She was in the kitchen, so if customers were in the dining area, they’d have certainly heard. She ran out to see what was going on.
A couple of customers were side-eying the employee, trying not to stare.
Katy groaned. “What’s going on?”
“Your mother!” she snapped. “She’s plum crazy.”
Doris huffed. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”
Katy turned toward the customers. “Lunch is on us today. Please excuse us.”
They scrambled to the back. “Mom, you’re covering the lunches I just gave away. Polly, I need to let you go. I’m sorry, but you need to be able to control your temper in front of customers. I just can’t have an outburst like that.”
“But...” Polly started. “Never mind. I quit. Your mother is a royal pain in the—”
“Watch it,” Katy said, stopping her before she could finish.
Doris smirked. “You can stop at your aunt’s on the way home and enjoy a bite of her potato salad.”
“Mom, can it,” Katy snapped.
Doris played innocent. “What?”
Katy knew her mother was rarely innocent, but it was her mother nonetheless.
***
WHEN LOLA AND EVE STOPPED by, they had interesting news. Hazel and Dolly followed behind them.
Hazel snorted. “Figures Faye got to go home first. Think she’ll send somebody to come get us?”
Dolly looked at her friend. “You know it doesn’t work that way. I wish it did. Obviously, we’re here for a reason. Otherwise, the Fairy Express would have stopped for us. From the sounds of it, we’re expected to work without our pouches of magic and fairy dust.”
“I’m famished,” Hazel hinted.
Eve set them up at a table and after introducing them to Doris, ordered each a sandwich. She followed Lola and Katy back into the kitchen.
“Fairy godmothers,” Doris mumbled under her breath. “Nothing but trouble.”
“Excuse me?” Dolly’s acute sense of hearing, being a dog, picked up the snide comment.
“You heard me,” Doris said. “I’ll make your sandwiches, but don’t expect me to buddy up to you. Sure, sure, you might have fooled the others, but I know your kind.”
Hazel snorted. “You’re looking for a hurting, grandma.”
“Who are you calling old?” Doris’s nostrils flared. “I know what you’re capable of. Scam artists are what you are. I call it like I see it. These others may not know your past, but I’m old school and I’m plenty aware of what went down.”
Dolly’s eyes narrowed. “Old lady, you better watch what you say.”
Doris smiled. “Or what? I heard you’re pouch-less.”
Dolly backed down for now.
Rocco stopped by after a hand of cards with his buddy to check-in with his wife. “Hey babe, I won two hundred smack-a-roos. Jimmy Jam shuffled the cards, and I swept them all.”
Doris glared over his shoulder.
“You’re not going to say anything?” He followed her gaze. “Dolly? Is that you? Hey girl, how have you been?”
“That’s the one?!” Doris flew over the counter and dove toward the dog.
Rocco snapped his fingers and everything froze. “Katy, get out here.”
Katy ran out at the sound of her father’s voice. “What’s going on, Pop?”
“You tell me...”
“Oh boy.” Katy went to the front door and locked it. She flipped over the closed sign and closed the blind on the door. It was a rare day when the blind was closed.
“I come in, I’m talking to your mother, she glares at somebody, I turn around. I recognize an old friend, and your mother goes ballistic. I think we’re looking at the next war of the worlds if we don’t squish it back into the can before it goes loose.”
“Why would Mom flip out over an old friend?”
Rocco shook his head. “I knew Dolly back in the day. She was a friend of a friend. Your mother was probably thrown that I knew her and made the assumption...”
“That she was the fairy godmother you’d dated back then? Oh boy, she went on and on about that the other day. I guess the trio of godmothers stirred up the past.”
“We’ve been together for how many years? You’d think she’d be over it, but you know your mother, any chance she can stick it to you, she will.”
Katy nodded. Her mother was one to constantly pick, pick, pick at something until it exploded— much like Polly earlier. She probably should have let her mother go and kept Polly, but Katy knew she was between a rock and a hard place there. “Do you want me to call in back up? I can grab Alex.”
“We should be okay. You stand between your mother and Dolly, and I’ll get a hold of your mom.”
Katy positioned herself. “When we’re done here, can we talk history? I was hoping you’d have some information.”
“Sure think, kiddo.” He snapped his fingers. The scene picked up exactly where it had left off.
“Let go of me!” Doris shouted. “I’m going to shred her.”
“Doris, I love you. Dolly is not who you’re thinking of,” he said with his hands wrapped around her waist.
“Oh, I know all about your lovefest,” she said.
Dolly barked. “What? Lovefest? What are you talking about?”
“She thinks you and me...”
Dolly bent over laughing.
“What are you laughing at?” Rocco asked.
“You and me?” She couldn’t stop laughing.
Rocco grew defensive. “You act like I’m not good enough?”
“Are you saying my Rocco isn’t good enough?” Doris started swinging her fists.
“Take it down a notch, Mom!” Katy yelped.
Rocco spoke. “She was a mutual friend. I never dated a dog.”
Doris softened her stance. “That’s not her? You knew her name.”
“Yeah, mutual acquaintance is all. You know you’re the only one for me Sugar Bunny.”
Doris giggled. “He called me Sugar Bunny. He hasn’t called me that in years.”
Rocco stroked her cheek. “There is nobody else.”
“Get a room,” Hazel snorted.
Lola stood wide-eyed, taking it all in. She wondered what the fight must have been like between her mother and father. The final one. The one that turned him into a frog. She remembered her fight with her mother, and that was a doozy.
