Free Limitless by Robert J. Crane Page B

grandmothers I had passed in various stores.
    After a solid minute of hugging him, she came off and saw me. “Oh, and who is this?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “Matthew, have you brought a—”
    “She’s working with me, Mum,” Webster said before she could finish her thought. “Sienna Nealon, this is my mum, Marjorie. Mum, this is Sienna Nealon.”
    “It’s lovely to meet you, dear,” she said and hugged me, too. I felt her arms envelop me and was utterly powerless to stop her. She was warm and sweet, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged.
    Then I remembered and felt a lump in my throat.
    “Oh, let me look at you,” she said, breaking off. “Any friend of Matthew’s is welcome in this house, of course.” She hurried back inside. “I wish you’d called, though!” She disappeared through the door. “I haven’t had a chance to straighten anything at all, the place is a dreadful mess.”
    Webster gestured for me to enter, and I did. I found myself in a hallway that led past a narrow staircase. To the right was a sitting room that opened into a small kitchen. Overstuffed couches filled the sitting room, and bookshelves filled with books lined the walls. Each shelf was neatly arranged from tallest to shortest book. There were two perfectly folded blankets on the back of each couch.
    My eyes fell to a table just to my right in the entry; it had freshly cut flowers from the garden, bright yellow and red ones, and when I let my finger run idly across the surface of the table, it came back completely free of dust.
    Clearly, Ma Webster and I had differing ideas about what constituted a “dreadful mess.”
    “I’ve got Lancashire hotpot on,” she called from in the kitchen. “The kettle’s almost boiling as well, if you’d care for some tea.” Her head popped around the entry to the sitting room. “Sienna, was it?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
    “Mum,” Webster called as he shut the door and locked it, “Sienna’s come over from the States. She’s uh… in need of a place to stay for the night.”
    I heard something clatter in the kitchen. “An American, dear?” Her head poked out again and she still wore a genuine smile. “Any friend of Matthew’s is welcome here, of course.” She straightened. “Oh, but the spare bedroom is in a terrible state, I’ll need to clean it immediately—” She froze. “Oh, the hotpot!” She disappeared back into the kitchen.
    I glanced at Webster. “Yeah, your mom is a real terror. I see why you warned me about her.”
    He cringed. “She’s a lovely person, really. She just… maybe tries a bit too hard.”
    “To what?” I asked, bereft of a clue. “To please others? God, what a failing that is.”
    “It can be a bit awkward,” he said, clearly a little embarrassed.
    “Oh, how you have suffered,” I said, “having a mother who endears herself to other people.”
    “It’s harder than you think,” he said. “Every one of my friends liked her more than me. She always had biscuits for them, always had extra dinner—and apparently she continues the tradition, even years after I got my own flat—I can’t even count the number of my former girlfriends she keeps in touch with in spite of me being done with them for years and years.”
    I raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, yeah? Are there are lot of those?”
    He grunted and looked a little flushed. “The point is, it’s not easy to live in her shadow.”
    “I’ve got some biscuits before dinner,” Marjorie said, appearing from the kitchen with a tray of cookies. A pot of tea sat in the middle of it, and three cups with saucers were arranged around the tray. She made her way to the overstuffed couches and bid us enter with a wave as she set it upon the table in the middle of the room. “Well, come on, then. The tea will get cold.”
    “Truly, I know no one with a burden as great as yours,” I muttered to Webster as I came into the sitting room.
    “One lump or