The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

can’t very well expect Grandma to crawl up into Maggie’s loft, plus she’ll want a private space, so the spare bedroom is really the best choice for her.”

“The spare bedroom?” Tony said. He was squeezing the ball tightly between his hands like he thought if he pressed hard enough, he could pop it. I could see the muscles tensing on his arms.

Dad kept talking. “It was Susan’s idea to bring her out here immediately, and I told her it didn’t make sense until we had a final confirmation from the assisted living people, but she went ahead and—”

Just then, Tony screwed up his face into a grimace and whipped the ball, super hard, against the house. It made a loud sound, and there was a black mark where it had hit the siding before rolling away into the grass.

“Tony!” my dad called, but Tony was already running into the house. He slammed the door behind him.

I felt my anger bubbling up in my gut. Tony shouldn’t have to sleep on the couch, though Grandma shouldn’t either. There had to be a better solution, and weren’t the grown-ups in charge of figuring that out?

“Why did you have to tell him to leave his room?” I said to Dad. “I could sleep on the couch, and . . . and Tony could sleep in my loft.” I wouldn’t like it, not that the couch was so bad. It’s just that I wouldn’t really like anyone—especially a somewhat smelly boy—sleeping in my room. But Dad shouldn’t have kicked him out of his space.

“He already had to leave his apartment,” I said, my voice rising. “And he was just getting settled here, and now you go and change everything on him.”

“I thought you’d be okay with Grandma staying here,” he said, “you, more than anyone.”

“Yeah, I don’t mind Grandma being here,” I said. “It’s not about Grandma, Dad. It’s about you messing everything up with Tony!”

I watched as my dad’s face flipped through a whole catalog of emotions, and while I didn’t necessarily want to stand there, waiting to see which one he landed on, I also couldn’t stop myself. There were things inside me that I needed to say, new things, surprising things, and now that I’d started, I had to see it through.

“Did you ever even really try to reconnect with him?” I asked. “Did you really try, or did you just give up? Because maybe it would have been nice to have a brother all this time, you know? Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad!”

“Maggie, I don’t really appreciate your tone,” Dad said. “There are a lot of things that you do not understand—”

“Then explain them to me!” I shouted. I was so tired of not knowing things.

Just then, Mom’s car turned into the driveway with Grandma in the passenger seat, wearing a blue scarf and a scowl.

Dad dropped his hands to his sides and let out a long exhale, like a ball with a slow leak. “Wonderful,” he muttered.

Mom pulled the car up, a grim expression on her face that stretched her lips into a thin line. She got out and headed around to Grandma’s side. “You look much better, honey,” she turned and said to me while opening Grandma’s door.

“Maggie wasn’t feeling well this morning, so she stayed home from school,” she explained to Grandma, who didn’t reply.

“Hi, Grandma!” I waved to her as she slowly made her way out of the car, but she was looking, not at me, but dismissively at my dad, who gave her a deflated smile. She didn’t answer me, and I felt some tears sting my eyes. Grandma stood in the driveway with her big black purse in front of her, and I wondered if she had packed a sandwich for the ride. I wondered whether she’d eaten it already.

Nobody had dinner together. Dad said he had to catch up on some emails since he’d left work early, so he was eating at the desk in their bedroom. Tony and I ate quietly, and quickly, at the kitchen island, while Mom served up a plate for Grandma and took it to the spare room (Grandma’s room? Tony’s room? What were we going to call it?) on a tray I’d decorated with heart stickers when I was in kindergarten. I could hear words floating down the stairs, Mom trying to coax Grandma to eat, like Grandma was a stubborn toddler.

“Just try a bite,” she was saying. “I made it just the way you like it.”

But Grandma had her own agenda. “And do you know when a bed will open up, Susan? When someone dies, that’s when. That whole place is filled with ghosts.”

Ghosts made me think of scary movies, which I didn’t like. When Olive and Rachel and I had slumber parties at Rachel’s, we always watched scary movies because Rachel’s parents never bothered coming down into her basement to see what we had on. Rachel loved them, and Olive sort of did, but she would mostly shriek, while I hid under a blanket.

I had never really thought of ghosts as real people, though, like people who had just died at the assisted living facility. I never thought of Grandpa as a ghost. Did Grandma? Did Grandma think about becoming a ghost herself? I shivered.

Later, Tony and I spread out on the sofa bed doing our homework, while Mom sat in a chair with a bunch of paperwork from the facility. Dad had made up the bed with the extra sheets and blankets earlier, while we were out of the room. It felt like I hadn’t said a word to Tony since our picnic.

I whispered, “Have you talked to Dad, after the whole . . . thing from earlier?”

Mom glanced up, and Tony shook his head. I noticed his duffel bag behind the chair, clothes spilling out like they’d been packed in a hurry.

Suddenly, Grandma entered the room, almost as quiet as a ghost, and stared at Tony. She turned to Mom, asking, “Who’s this?”

Mom set her paperwork on