Free Mother's Day by Patricia MacDonald

me?”
    “Because you won’t let me do anything,” he fumed. “You’re predicting doom, and when I try to find a way to head it off…”
    “There is no way to head this off,” said Karen. “She’s here. We have to deal with whatever happens. All I was doing was saying how I felt “
    “Fine,” said Greg. “If that’s what you want to do, suit yourself.”
    “I was hoping for a little support from you,” she said indignantly.
    “You want me to hold your hand while you let this woman destroy what we’ve built?” he cried.
    Karen looked at him in amazement. She felt dizzy, as if the ground had dropped away beneath her. He was always the cool head, the optimist. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “Is that what you really think?”
    Greg shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s this day. It’s been a terrible day.”
    She felt a sudden wave of pity for him. Shame, almost, for having voiced all these dire possibilities as if she were talking to some disinterested third party. After all, Jenny was his child, too. Whatever the outcome of this showdown between mothers, it was turning his world upside down, too. “If it hadn’t been today,” she said gently, “it would have been another day. We just have to face it.”
    “I guess you’re right,” he said grimly.
    She touched his face, which was creased with worry. “We can handle it,” she said.
    “That’s my line,” he said.
    “Usually,” she admitted.
    He looked away.

Chapter Five
    The woman seated behind the motel desk was so absorbed in her book that she did not notice the wiry, sallow-complected man enter the lobby until he was right in front of her. She started and let out a little cry, clapping a beringed hand to her ample chest. “Eddie, my God. You’re like an Indian the way you sneak up on people.”
    Eddie McHugh checked his watch against the clock on the wall. “Those mystery books you read make you jumpy,” he said.
    Margo Hofsteder closed her book and looked at her own watch. “Is it eight o’clock already?”
    Eddie nodded. “I mopped up around the ice machine again,” he said. “But you better get somebody over here to fix it. I don’t know beans about refrigeration and stuff like that.”
    Margo, a heavyset woman in her late fifties, sighed and slid off the stool behind the desk. “I called the appliance repair guy two days ago,” she complained. “He keeps saying he’s coming. I’ll tell you, sometimes I wonder why I keep this place now that Anton’s gone. He always had a way of getting these people to hop to it.”
    Eddie grunted impassively. He’d heard it all before. He came around the desk as Margo wedged her way out past her night desk man. Margo and her husband, Anton, had owned the Jefferson Motel for twenty years. In December Anton had keeled over one night at dinner and was gone before the ambulance arrived. Margo was still dickering about whether to sell or stay on. In February she’d hired Eddie as a night clerk and general maintenance man. Ed and his wife were separated, and while Margo didn’t pay a lot, a free room in the motel was an irresistible part of the deal. Between the two of them they managed to keep things running pretty well in the off season, but summer was coming, with its crush of visitors, and Margo had to decide what to do. Ed was okay, but he was no ball of fire about taking care of things. And it just wasn’t any fun without Anton. On the other hand, sitting around with a bunch of other widows in Florida wouldn’t be much fun, either, Margo realized. It gave her a headache to think about it.
    “Now you know how to work this credit card thingamajig,” Margo said, pointing to a small console on the counter that looked like a child’s calculator.
    “I know,” said Eddie irritably. She asked him that every single time she left him to work the desk.
    “Well, okay,” she said. “I’m going home to finish my book. Good night, Ed.”
    And eat a pound of