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old invalid.
    But
damn,
she
was
some kind of decrepit old invalid, if she couldn’t even get up off the floor!
    Really, she couldn’t believe this. Not this, now, on Christmas Eve. Not with her granddaughter coming. Faye couldn’t help it. She broke into serious sobs of self-pity, boo-hooing so hard it hurt her neck and her sinuses clogged up with mucus and she couldn’t even get up to get a handkerchief to blow her nose.
    The front door banged and Alice swept into the house. From Faye’s vantage point on the floor, Alice looked even taller than she really was. She wore her ankle-length mink—no one would dare spit on Alice!—and it billowed around her like a monarch’s mantle as she strode across the kitchen floor.
    “Good grief, honey, you look awful!” Alice knelt next to Faye. “Where does it hurt?”
    “My ankle. And my neck.”
    “Your neck, huh? Can’t take any chances with that. I’m going to call 911, get an ambulance here. Don’t argue. And you’re cold as ice.”
    In just seconds, Alice had the phone in one hand and a blanket in the other, multitasking, as usual.
    Four hours later, at eight o’clock on Christmas Eve, Faye was released from Mount Auburn Hospital. She’d been examined, x-rayed, ultrasounded, fitted with a soft ankle cast, presented with crutches, and enclosed in a neck brace that squeezed the flab around her jaw-line up, so her head seemed to be resting on a ring of Silly Putty.
    “I look like a walrus,” Faye complained.
    “And a very pretty one, too,” Laura assured her.
    Alice had stayed with Faye for the first three hours, until Laura could get her husband and child settled in her mother’s house. Then Laura drove Faye’s car to the hospital so Alice could return to her own Christmas Eve plans.
    The good news was that no bones were broken. Faye’s ankle was only sprained, but sprains could be the devil to heal, the physician assured her. She had to stay off her feet.
    Christmas, and she had to stay off her feet!
    The bad news was that the tests had revealed Faye’s neck showed signs of osteoarthritis, caused by aging. Faye moaned when the physician told her
that.
Now, when everyone asked her what had happened, she’d have to confess that she was
aging.
As if it weren’t already apparent. None of her vertebrae were cracked, but she was supposed to wear her neck brace for the next few days, to support her neck and her weakened, arthritic old neck bones.
    “It couldn’t have happened at a better time,” Laura assured Faye as they drove through the dark evening. “Lars and I are here, we can take care of you. You can lounge about in bed or on the sofa and we’ll wait on you hand and foot.”
    “But it’s Christmas!” Faye protested. She’d forced herself to be cheerful in the hospital, but now here came the tears again. She’d had the pain medication prescription filled but refused to take one of the pills until bedtime. She didn’t want to be dizzy and drugged on Christmas Eve. She
had
taken two aspirin, which helped, but they didn’t completely alleviate the pain. The whole time it was as if someone were pressing an iron set to “linen” up against her neck.
    Laura reached over to pat her mother’s hand. “Hey, remember. If Fate gives you lemons, make lemonade!”
    “Oh, no!” Faye groaned. How many times during Laura’s childhood had Faye given her exactly that advice? “Did that irritate you as much as it irritates me?”
    Laura tossed her a grin. “What do you think?”
    Faye smiled, sniffing back her tears. It was, after all,
lovely
to be in her daughter’s company again. And if Laura had become, well,
assertive,
that was a good thing, a sign she’d really grown up. Faye closed her eyes, resting. She’d have some Champagne when they got home. Certainly there’d be plenty of it. The new
über
competent Laura had used her cell phone to call everyone who was invited to the Christmas Eve party to explain Faye’s fall and regretfully cancel. What