Mulch Ado About Nothing by Jill Churchill Read Free Book Online Page B

she frightens me just the same. And if I weren't a bit scared of her, I'd still dislike her. She's one of those people who get everything wrong, and when corrected, merely ignore the correction. Not that I go around correcting people if I can help it," she added with a smile.
    “Funny. I hadn't noticed that about you." Jane smiled back.
    “You've absolutely got to keep all your doors locked and stay in the back of the house where nobody can see you tottering around," Shelleywarned. "She's latched on to you and will be back."
    “Maybe I can make it clear that I don't want help?"
    “You can't. People like that are incapable of being insulted or brushed off. She's probably gone through dozens, if not hundreds, of potential friends with her loony pronouncements. People have probably moved from their homes in the middle of the night to escape her and gone to live in Venezuela under assumed names."
    “Oh, Shelley," Jane whined. "My life's falling apart before my eyes. My foot is broken; my son is out to dinner with a freak of a girl; and I have a nutcase groupie.”
    Shelley just shook her head. "Such is life," she said.
    Eight
·
    Jane was
getting ready for bed
when the
phone rang. It was Ursula again. "Jane, have you eaten your dinner yet?”
    Gritting her teeth with irritation for a moment, Jane said in a cool formal voice, "Not yet."
    “You must eat, dear. You need all the nutrients you can get.”
    Jane drew a deep breath and tried to overcome her upbringing in the diplomatic corps.
    “Ursula, I know you mean well, but I'm an intelligent adult and can take perfectly good care of myself.”
    As Shelley had predicted, Ursula took no offense. "I know you are. I'm just concerned about you."
    “Thank you, but I'm already in bed and almost asleep, so I have to hang up now.”
    Jane put the phone down before Ursula could reply.
    She knew she'd been rude, but knew of no other way to get rid of this extremely annoying person. Especially when she had other disturbing things on her mind.
    The doctor had told her she must be very careful of her foot. The fracture was clear across the large outside bone but still in place. If it shifted, he warned, they'd have to operate and pin it back in place and she'd be on crutches for a very long time.
    And her older son was going out with a girl who had deliberately made herself look like a freak. She always thought he had abnormally good sense. Had she merely fooled herself?
    Her daughter was acting like she knew everything there was to know about France after a two-week visit, which was annoying because Jane had spent several years total living in France herself when she was a girl and her diplomatic corps parents had been stationed there. Jane's own dislike of a gypsy life with no real home had convinced her that her children would have normal lives and stay in the same home until they were grown. Maybe she'd made a mistake in that.
    And besides everything else that was bothering her, her foot hurt. Her arms hurt from fighting the crutches, even the other leg hurt because she was having to put all her weight on it, and her back was having alarming little twinges. When she was a teenager, she could have coped with this, but forty-year-old bodies reacted badly to change.
    Then her mind turned to the reactions of others. That was a revelation to her. Perfect strangers had asked her how she did that to herself, and all sounded disappointed when she admitted she simply fell off a curbing.
    She finally was able to smile to herself. Maybe she could spice up the story a bit. She crawled into bed, trying very hard not to kick the cats, who were eyeing her suspiciously, and fell asleep thinking of other explanations for the cast.
    She woke suddenly an hour later when she heard the front door open and close and Mike's distinctive footsteps coming upstairs. She flipped on her bedside light and called softly to him.
    “Don't forget to set your alarm," she said when he poked his head around her