Free Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors by Molly Harper Page B

along, but it’s still hard, you know? I hate that we were so close for most of my life, but at the end . . . we were barely speaking.”
    A little pang of guilt twinged in my chest. Grandma Ruthie had been such a divisive force for the two of us. I was Daddy’s clear favorite. We operated on the same wavelength. As much as I thought Jenny was Mama’s favorite, our mother’s loyalties had always been divided. While she asked me why I couldn’t be more like Jenny, she was constantly fussing to Jenny about how worried she was about me. Jenny was just looking to be someone’s favorite. Grandma was more than willing to provide her the kind of attention she wanted, if Jenny was willing to jump.
    As Jenny and I started to mend our fences over the past few months, she and Grandma Ruthie spent less and less time together. Grandma couldn’t understand why Jenny was “wasting her time” with me. And Jenny lost patience with Grandma’s continued criticisms and complaints about me. It felt terrible to be the wedge that drove the two of them apart, but I had to admit that Jenny was more relaxed, more human, without our grandmother’s influence.
    I was glad that Zeb and Jolene spent so much time at the house and occasionally required sustenance. Otherwise, I would only have the creamer and the sugar left over from my human days to offer Jenny. I poured her a cup of coffee and sat down across the table.
    Jenny smiled as a thank-you and sipped. “Mama said for the visitation, we should come up with our favorite memory of Grandma. In her notes to the pastor, Grandma said she wanted us to show what a kind, loving woman she was. I thought I’d talk about all the times she took me on special little shopping trips or when she’d take me to the Teeny Teas to show off the dresses she’d made me. What about you?”
    Hmm, a nice, sweet story about Grandma Ruthie. The happiest memory I had of her was when she and my ghostly aunt Jettie had a screaming match through a dry-erase board. The memories of her dragging me kicking and screaming to the Teeny Teas would hardly qualify as memorial material. Nor would her disappointment with my low placement in the one Little Miss Half-Moon Hollow pageant she’d managed to force me into. Or the time she refused to speak to me for an entire summer because I wouldn’t date some mouth-breathing cretin grandson of one of her bridge club friends. (Best summer of my life.)
    “Jane?”
    “I’m thinking,” I muttered.
    The tantrums, the scoldings, the faked medical emergencies, the many, many reminders that I was not what she expected in a grandchild. I can’t say they made for warm, fuzzy Grandma memories.
    “There has to be something, Jane. I mean, you weren’t always at each other’s throat.”
    “You know, in some cultures, the bereaved hire mourners to make sure it looks like the deceased is beloved and missed. Maybe I could hire someone to do my special memory?” I suggested. Jenny frowned at me. “Look, Jen, I didn’t measure up for Grandma Ruthie. She didn’t make any effort to hide that. Why pretend now? If I get up in front of a crowd of people and wax poetic about my poignant, life-affirming moments with Grandma, everyone will know I’m lying. So why do it?”
    “Because at least you’ve made the gesture?”
    “Jenny.”
    “Funerals are for the living, Jane, not the dead,” she said, right before realizing how inappropriate that statement was and starting to giggle. She rolled into allout guffaws and sat there, braying like a donkey, with tears streaming down her cheeks, until I handed her a wet paper towel to wipe down her face.
    “You done now?” I asked, bemused.
    She sniffed and nodded. “It was worth a shot. I don’t even know why I’m saying this stuff. My therapist says it’s a coping mechanism. I think I can control or fix the situation by making comments like that.”
    “Whoa, back up, did you say ‘therapist’?”
    “Yeah, Kent and I actually started a few