Isabel and Alma Trumbo are sister sleuths who are seventysomething and live in small town Quiet Anchorage, VA. This humorous short excerpt from The Cashmere Shroud finds them discussing Isabel's sometimes confounding but always easy-natured husband Max and son Cecil, both now deceased.
Isabel laughed. “The last time I ran anywhere like an antelope came when the smoke alarm shrilled out in the middle of the night. Max and I still resided on the boulevard.” She pronounced it as bou-le-VARD. “We sprang up from bed to see what the matter was.”
“I remember your telling me that story,” said Alma. “Master Cecil had tiptoed down to the basement to experiment with his new chemistry set. He played an apprentice wizard concocting a secret formula to drink and turn him invisible.”
“He’d watched 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' and liked his chance at success. Afterward, the house reeked of rotten eggs for a week, and Max, as he always did, laughed it off. Boys will be boys was his philosophy.”
“Did you confiscate Cecil’s new chemistry set?”
“Indeed I did on the spot, though by then a new hobby had grabbed his fancy. Inventing a pair of tinfoil-and-bubblegum wings to leap and fly off the garage roof, if I’m not mistaken. But that’s another story for another time.”
Maybe he began sneaking smokes on the playground around then, thought Alma.
She said, “Cecil was a devil like Max.”
“And both devils, big and small, are now gone.” Isabel’s gaze drifted out the window. “You know what’s so untrue? Time doesn’t bind up and heal all wounds. It just never does because I miss them more than I ever did.”
End of #SampleSunday
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