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giggling, I think, a little before my dad left, and never started again. She works sixteen hours a day, so she’s more of a businesslike, head-on-straight type, who only thinks of the practical. Which is why I have nothing but serviceable, lacking-any-semblance-of-style clothes to wear tomorrow. Goofing off, playing games, enjoying life—these do not exist in her world.
    I stand in the doorway of her room and see her lying on her bed faceup. She’s twirling the phone cord in her hand like a teenager and saying, “Oh, but you don’t!” in some flirty tone I think should be reserved for paid escorts. Not moms. Ew.
    Mom flirting is one of those arts that should be buried forever, like contra dancing.
    But wait. Who is my mom flirting with?
    She jumps up when she sees me, and her tone quickly turns businesslike. “I’ll talk to you later,” she says, and almost hangs up before she finishes speaking. Then she grins. “So!”
    “Whatever, Mom. I’m not three. Who was that?”
    “Who? Oh. The bagel deliveryman.”
    “You’re dating the bagel delivery guy?”
    She is biting her lip, kind of like a sex kitten. “What? No. I was just scheduling our deliveries for the fall season.”
    “And flirting.”
    “I was not,” she says resolutely, sitting down at her ledger. “Seriously, Gwen. I am too busy to flirt. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to be nice to our vendors. I don’t want him blabbing all over the island that we don’t bake our own bagels.”
    “Oo-kay,” I say, even though I don’t believe it. We get a dozen bagels delivered every day and we usually end up throwing them out, because only a couple of people on the island eat them, and one of them is this senile geezer who vowed to write a letter to the governor of New Jersey decrying our establishment as anti-Semitic if we stopped supplying them. I need to let the flirting thing drop, because the fact that my mom might have a sex life is not something I want to think of right now. Actually, it’s not something I want to think of ever.
    Of course, not wanting to think about something is a sure way to end up thinking about it. I try to wipe the image out of my mind, but I can’t remember the thing I wanted to talk to her about. Oh, right. Mr. Scary. Mr. Potential Rapist. “Um. Yeah. Why did you hire that guy? Did we officially kill off all the normal citizens of Cellar Bay? Or did he?”
    She waves her hand at me. “He’s fine. He’s Melinda’s grandson.”
    “He is?” I blurt out. Now that I think of it, it does totally explain why he doesn’t have a decent haircut.
    She nods. “I’ll admit I didn’t know what to expect. Melinda just told me that her grandchild, Chris, was coming to town and really needed a job to get back on his feet again. And I think I owe her a favor.”
    She’s admiring my atrocious haircut again. I reach into the refrigerator and pull out a Vitaminwater. “Get back on his feet?”
    “I don’t know what she meant. It’s all ancient history, anyway. And I’m not going to pry. He just came to stay with Melinda because his mother is traveling in a show.”
    “You mean the prostitute?”
    “She’s in show business,” Mom says, correcting me, lifting her chin as if it’s the noblest profession ever. Unfortunately, my mom fails to realize that most traveling show people are psychotic, restless souls, many of whom have horns growing out of their heads or other freakish characteristics that make them worthy of an audience. And any offspring of a woman who wears skintight snakeskin dresses cannot be sane. Period.
    I clear my throat. “Did you get references?”
    “I don’t need references. Melinda is a good enough reference for me.”
    “But do you even know anything about him?”
    “Like?”
    “Like how old he is. Whether he can handle money. Whether he counts decapitating small animals as one of his hobbies.”
    She glares at me. “He’s eighteen. And he’s fine.”
    “But he freaks me out,” I say