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home, his school, his friends, even his father. Going to camp was the only familiar thing left, and now you’re taking that away from him, too.”
     
    Natalie was so furious when she got home that she slammed the door as she entered the kitchen. Still in her nightshirt, Valerie was at the stove, pouring a cup of coffee from the dented aluminum pot that had served the Westfield family for generations. Dark hair in a lopsided topknot, eyelids smudged with mascara, and mouth still stained red from last night’s dress-up lipstick, she looked like a hooker who’d put in a hard night.
    “What’re you in a snit about?” she asked with a huge yawn.
    Huffing from the walk across the field, Natalie stepped to the cupboard to get a clean coffee mug. “That man. ”
    “What man?” Valerie lifted her eyebrows. “If he’s under forty and halfway cute, give me five minutes to grab a shower and I’ll take him off your hands.”
    “Is sex all you ever think about?”
    Valerie shrugged and smiled. “Getting laid is fun. Maybe if you tried it occasionally, you’d be less acerbic.”
    Natalie heaped a spoon with sugar and stirred it into her coffee. “I bypassed acerbic and went straight to royally pissed off. He is such a jerk.”
    “He, who?”
    “Zeke Coulter.” Natalie went to sit at the battered wood table, which had been painted with light gray enamel in the sixties, had gotten chipped over the years, and was now a mottled mess, with previous layers of paint showing through. Pop refused to get a new dinette set because this one was still serviceable. Natalie waffled between wanting to strip it down to the original wood and wanting to take a hacksaw to one leg. “I went over to help Chad with the work, and he refused to let me stay.”
    “Why?” Taking care not to spill her coffee, Valerie sat down and crossed her legs, displaying slender thighs tanned to a smooth butternut. “Seems to me he’d be happy to get the repairs done faster.”
    “Oh, no. He’s convinced I’m mollycoddling Chad. Says he needs to learn a lesson. Like it’s any of his business how I raise my son? What is it with men, anyway? I’ve never met one yet who didn’t think he was lord of the universe.”
    Bright-eyed and smiling, Gramps entered the kitchen just then. Up since five, he had already finished reading the Portland Oregonian and was eager to start watching television. “What’s that you say? Your universal joint went out?” House shoes flapping, he gimped over to the stove to refill his coffee cup. “That’ll cost a pretty penny. Too bad your daddy’s back is messed up. He could put it on the hoist and have it repaired in nothin’ flat. How’d you get home last night? Frank drive you?”
    Valerie sighed, looking like a disgruntled raccoon with the smears of black ringing her eyes. “Her car’s fine, Gramps. We were talking about men.”
    Gramps harrumphed and came to sit at the table. “Is that all you ever think about, girl? You only broke up with Keith a few days ago.”
    “Kevin,” Valerie corrected, “and it’s been two weeks.”
    Gramps shook his head. “If he’s a geek, why’d you move in with him?”
    Natalie took a sip of coffee to hide her grin.
    Raising her voice to a near yell, Valerie said, “Turn on your hearing aid! I didn’t say he was a geek. I said we’ve been broken up for two weeks!”
    Gramps fiddled with the outdated hearing aid and winced when the increase in volume made the device squeal. “Damned thing.”
    “You need a new one,” Natalie inserted. “Medicare would probably help pay for it.”
    “That’s the problem with you young people. Every durned thing has to be brand spankin’ new. Like as if old is worthless? This hearin’ aid was good enough for yer grandma, by God, and it’s good enough for me.” When he had the hearing aid adjusted to suit him, he turned questioning blue eyes on Natalie. “So what’s this about your universal joint?”
    “My car is fine. I was just