Free The Blue Door by Christa J. Kinde Page A

delivery!”
    Koji hopped lightly from the top of the fridge and darted toward the front porch, calling, “Milo, she agreed!”
    Prissie followed much more slowly, wringing a dishtowel between her hands. The mailman waited just beyond the welcome mat in his uniform — a long-sleeved shirtwith the postal service’s logo stitched onto the arm. “Hello, Miss Priscilla,” he greeted, nodding pleasantly at Koji. “I had a feeling you would be here. There’s a package for your grandmother.”
    He lifted a parcel about the size of a shoebox, and Koji looked expectantly at Prissie. “Can Milo come in?”
    “I guess,” she allowed. “Grandma’s in the garden.”
    He nodded. “I’ll wait.”
    Koji ignored the uncomfortable silence that snuck into the room and helped things along by interrupting it. “Where is the box from?”
    “Spain,” Milo replied.
    “Do you know someone in Spain?” the young angel inquired of Prissie.
    “My Aunt Ida,” she replied curtly. “It’s where she and Uncle Lo were going next after Portugal.”
    The conversation stalled again, but thankfully, Grandma Nell bustled up the path from the garden, a basket under one arm, and a bunch of hydrangeas in her other hand. Milo quickly moved to open the door for her. “Good afternoon, ma’am!”
    “Oh, Milo! What a nice surprise!” she exclaimed. “Come on through, and I’ll find you a little something. Prissie, fetch me a vase for these. You know where they are.”
    She gladly escaped and took her time choosing from the empty vases lining the shelf over her grandmother’s laundry tub. “Unbelievable,” she grumbled, unhappily patting her flour-streaked apron.
    “What do you not believe?” inquired Koji curiously.
    Prissie whirled, startled that the young angel had followed her. “Milo’s timing,” she groused.
    “His delivery was punctual.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” she snapped. “I wasn’t expecting to see him today.”
    Koji’s face took on a look of concentration. “I thought you said you were not avoiding him.”
    “I’m
not
!” Prissie protested.
    “Are you unhappy to see him?”
    “N-no, but I’m a mess, and I don’t know what to
say
to him!”
    He considered this for a moment before asking, “What would you speak to Milo about if nothing had changed?”
    She shrugged moodily. “Things.”
    Koji accepted her answer without hesitation. “He would still like to hear about things. I know it.”
    When Prissie returned to the kitchen with a cobalt blue vase, Milo was already seated at the table, a tall glass of iced tea and a plate of lemon bars set before him. Grandma turned from the sink where she was rinsing tomatoes and said, “Lovely, sweetie. Now, go sit with Milo, and we’ll have a look into Ida’s box together.”
    Trying to hide her nervousness, Prissie slid into the chair next to Milo’s. A glance in Koji’s direction showed that the younger angel had returned to his perch on the refrigerator, which offered a decent view of the proceedings while keeping him out from underfoot.
    Grandma Nell bustled over and thumped a red enamel colander and a bowl of freshly picked beans between the two. Without batting an eye, Milo reached for a handful and began snapping the ends off. At Prissie’s startled expression, he smiled. “I’ve been doing this for quite some time. Your grandmother trained me when I first started my route.”
    She couldn’t decide whether she should be annoyed that her grandmother had been quietly hogging so much of Milo’s time over the years … or amused at how much the mailman looked like one of her big brothers. They always looked so awkward when Grandma bossed them into helping snap beans or shell peas. “Does she ask you to hunt duck eggs, too?” she asked before she remembered to hold back.
    Milo’s eyes took on a sparkle, and he shook his head. “I haven’t been asked to do that yet, but two winters back, I received lessons in knitting.”
    “How did that go?”