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kind of creeped her out a little.
    “Princess contestants are older, ten to fourteen.” Miranda explained. “In your regular category, you’ll be one of the oldest, so you’ll look big, bigger than you even are in real life. So next to the girls in the princess group, you’ll look normal size. Smaller even, which is better!”
    Bailey stared at her. She was thinking about the five Cadbury Creme Eggs she’d eaten during that morning’s “elliptical workout.”
    “So … it is cheating.”
    “I’m trying to help you,” Miranda said, confounded by her daughter’s reluctance to endorse her deceitful, yet sensible plan. “Just … trust me. It’ll work.”
    The warm purr of a lawn mower sputtered to life in the distance. Miranda laid on the horn again, inciting a dirty look from a portly neighbor on a Rascal using a grabber to jerk obscenely large underwear from a clothesline.
    “Hey there, Emma.” Miranda waved, then honked again. “Mom, hurry up! We’re late!” She honked again. “I’m gonna leave these boys on the porch if you don’t get out here!”
    Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, Miranda saw her old, battered swing set slouching like an elderly nanny in the corner of the yard. Her father, Roger, had built it from found materials when Miranda was five. It quickly became Miranda’s second home and her only needed source of entertainment. There were two swings, a tube slide, a rope bridge, a pole to slide down, and a set of monkey bars. The design made it versatile enough to be whatever her imagination wanted it to be. When she wanted to be a princess, it was a castle. When she wanted to be a pirate princess, it was a pirate ship. When she wanted to be Princess Leia, it was the Millennium Falcon. Now, weather-beaten and rusted through, it was a monument to tetanus. Her boys loved it.
    Finally, Miranda’s mother, Joan (pronounced “Jo-Ann”), unlatched the screen door and waved.
    “Jesus, it’s about time,” Miranda said under her breath. The sliding door of the minivan moaned and sputtered open like a huge mouth deciding whether or not it wanted to vomit. It was the boys’ cue to get out.
    “Listen to Grandma!” Miranda yelled at their backs as they ran toward the house. “I’ll see you Sunday!” And then added, “Wish your sister and me good luck!”
    “Hang on!” Joan yelled as she laboriously inched her way down the worn wooden steps of the screened-in back patio. Miranda felt the increasingly frequent anxiety of a blown schedule and rubbed Brixton for comfort.
    “Come on, dammit,” Miranda said quietly, cursing the woman who gave her life. “I don’t have time for this crap right now.” She turned to Bailey, “I love your grandmother very much.”
    Joan’s knees were swollen from arthritis and stiff from the rain that would start in about four hours. Her left meniscus had ground to powder, leaving her bones to rub against one another like a mortar and pestle. Sometimes they would vibrate on contact, and Joan could feel her soul shudder, that nails-on-a-chalkboard feeling emanating from deep inside her being. Wearing her best smile, and third-best housecoat, Joan finally made her way to the minivan and leaned in the window.
    “You off?”
    “We’re late. Heading to Knoxville.”
    “Okay.” Joan nodded knowingly several times. “In Tennessee?”
    “Is there another one?”
    “I don’t know. Probably.” She put her hand on Miranda’s belly. “Hello, sweetie.”
    Miranda put the minivan in reverse, “We need to go, Mom.”
    “What time should I put the boys to bed?”
    “Just let ’em fall asleep in front of the TV. Ray should be by around ten or so to pick them up.”
    “Okay, then.” Joan waved to Bailey and smiled. “Hey, hon. You gonna win this weekend?”
    Bailey looked up from her iPod, smiled at her grandmother, and gestured toward her mother. “Mom thinks so.”
    “Good. Good for you.” Joan smiled.
    Miranda blushed and let her foot off