Free The Queen of Sleepy Eye by Patti Hill

to see my tiara. When I told them about the Pontiac, Russell offered me a job—Kno application, no nothing. The wife …” Mom yawned again. “I wish I could remember her name. She’s nice too.”
    Uh-oh.
    â€œThey have the cutest chicks at the store. You should come to see them when you’re done cleaning.”
    â€œI have to feed the mortician, remember?”
    â€œMake sure Mrs. Clancy pays for the ingredients.”

Seven
    I scraped at the meatloaf’s blackened glaze. The telephone rang. Not one of those friendly Princess-phone rings, but an irascible alarm. I ran to the chapel window to see if Mrs. Clancy was still within shouting distance. The postman waved from the mailbox. I dropped the drape and returned to the kitchen just in time to be startled by the ringing telephone again.
    The mortician had returned to the basement to prepare Miss Bigelow by doing things my imagination constructed without consent. The last thing I needed was another death call. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. Through my teeth, I said, “I hate my mother.” The telephone rang again. Yet another reason to envy Lizzy Bennet. True, she endures interminable teas in the company of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but she is never startled at the sound of a telephone announcing a dearly departed.
    Briiing!
    â€œAren’t you going to answer that?” A young girl with a pointed chin and a pouf of lemonade hair stood with her nose to the screendoor. A wire basket full of eggs sat by her bare feet. The girl was young, maybe ten, no older than twelve.
    I wiped the tears from my face. “It’s impolite to answer a phone too soon,” I said. “You should always let it ring at least three times.”
    The telephone trilled again.
    The girl opened the door and carried her egg basket to the counter beside the refrigerator. A smudge of dirt from the screen darkened the tip of her nose. “Says who?”
    I wavered between shooing her outside and demonstrating my superior knowledge of the world. “All the magazines,” I said, and the phone rang for what seemed like the zillionth time. Though the snot in my nose distorted my words, I said with more confidence that I owned, “There, I can answer the phone now.”
    Under the girl’s watchful gaze, I forgot the Clancy and Sons official greeting. “Hello?”
    On the other end of the phone line, a woman coughed to clear her throat. Still, she spoke haltingly with a voice rubbed raw from crying. “Is–is Georgia there?”
    â€œWho is it?” asked the pixie-faced girl.
    I held the handset to my chest. “She wants to talk to Georgia.”
    â€œShe means Mrs. Clancy.”
    â€œI know that,” I said, but I’d forgotten. Who called adults by their first names?
    The girl said, “Tell her Georgia will call her as soon as you gather the needed information.”
    I obeyed the girl.
    â€œMy Arthur, he’s gone,” said the woman on the phone. “I need someone to come pick him up. He passed in his sleep, the dear man. I’ve never slept alone, not in the whole sixty-two years we’ve been married.”
    The girl, who only came to my shoulder, pressed the list of questions I was supposed to ask into my hands. She stood on tiptoe and leaned in, putting her ear next to mine at the receiver. Her hair smelled of rosemary. I laid the list on the counter and scribbled the answers. “Where do you live, ma’am? I’ll send someone right out.”
    She gave me her address and said, “Thank you for your kindness.”
    The dial tone hummed in my ear.
    The girl said, “You better call Georgia.”
    â€œNo, I think I’ll call H first.”
    The girl opened the refrigerator. She picked our eggs out of the egg tray and tossed them in the trash.
    â€œHey!” I said, tethered to the telephone.
    â€œThe first dozen are free,” she said, loading eggs the color of