Again I got no homework done. The more I watched them, the madder I got. I was still a
cluck-faced jerk, while Juli was laughing it up with my
grandfather. Had I ever seen him smile? Really smile? I don't think so! But now he was knee-
high in nettles, laughing.
At dinner that night he'd showered and changed back into his regular clothes and house
slippers, but he didn't look the same. It was like
someone had plugged him in and turned on the light.
“Good evening,” he said as he sat down with the rest of us. “Oh, Patsy, that looks delicious!”
“Well, Dad,” my mom said with a laugh, “your excursion across the street seems to have
done you a world of good.”
“Yeah,” my father said. “Patsy tells me you've been over there all afternoon. If you were in
the mood for home improvement projects, why didn't
you just say so?”
My father was just joking around, but I don't think my grandfather took it that way. He helped
himself to a cheese-stuffed potato and said, “Pass
the salt, won't you, Bryce?”
So there was this definite tension between my father and my grandfather, but I think if Dad
had dropped the subject right then, the vibe would've
vanished.
Dad didn't drop it, though. Instead, he said, “So why's the girl the one who's finally doing
something about their place?”
My grandfather salted his potato very carefully, then looked across the table at me. Ah-oh, I
thought. Ah- oh. In a flash I knew those stupid eggs
were not behind me. Two years of sneaking them in the trash, two years of avoiding
discussion of Juli and her eggs and her chickens and her earlymorning
visits, and for what? Granddad knew, I could see it in his eyes. In a matter of seconds he'd
crack open the truth, and I'd be as good as
fried.
Enter a miracle. My grandfather petrified me for a minute with his eyes but then turned to my
father and said, “She wants to, is all.”
A raging river of sweat ran down my temples, and as my father said, “Well, it's about time
someone did,” my grandfather looked back at me and I
knew—he was not going to let me forget this. We'd just had another conversation, only this
time I was definitely not dismissed.
After the dishes were cleared, I retreated to my room, but my grandfather came right in,
closed the door behind him, and then sat on my bed. He
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did this all without making a sound. No squeaking, no clanking, no scraping, no breathing …I
swear, the guy moved through my room like a ghost.
And of course I'm banging my knee and dropping my pencil and deteriorating into a pathetic
pool of Jell-O. But I tried my best to sound cool as I
said, “Hello, Granddad. Come to check out the digs?”
He pinched his lips together and looked at nothing but me.
I cracked. “Look, Granddad, I know I messed up. I should've just told her, but I couldn't. And I
kept thinking they'd stop. I mean, how long can a
chicken lay eggs? Those things hatched in the fifth grade! That was like, three years ago!
Don't they eventually run out? And what was I supposed to
do? Tell her Mom was afraid of salmonella poisoning? And Dad wanted me to tell her we
were allergic—c'mon, who's going to buy that? So I just
kept, you know, throwing them out. I didn't know she could've sold them. I thought they were
