Noleen suddenly leans forward on the box, and I look up, scrunching the paper. Sondra is coming toward us with a box of desserts. “You’re Mary’s daughter’s friend, ah… Give me a second. I am bad with names.”
We all look at Sondra.
“Noleen, right?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am, that is correct.”
Sondra smiles. “Lloyd always loved Petra. Such a sweet girl,” she says, and my lip trembles remembering yesterday.
Jake walks out the back, and Noleen turns her head to see him slip into the kitchen before snatching the paper from my hand, and I let out a breath as she pockets it.
“You’ll have to tell Petra to come see me. Is she still around?”
“Ah, she went on vacation, ma’am, to visit her mother in the nursing home,” Noleen tells her.
Jake told me that Sondra and Mary were friends and that
