Summer at Fraser’s Mill

That Michigan Game

G race was working on Saturday morning when Alex rushed in with a box of asparagus. “Did you see the post on the town’s page?” She bounced with excitement. “They’re gonna be playing euchre at the church hall this afternoon! Do you wanna be my partner?”

“Euchre?” Grace asked. “I forgot that existed. In college the only card game anybody played was poker. Nobody seems to play euchre outside of Michigan.”

“Well, we still play it a lot here,” Alex said. “Dorothy set it up, so the Ladies’ Guild is hosting it. She wanted to do something nice for the town after they helped with her house.”

“I hope I still remember how to play.” Grace took the box of asparagus from Alex and started putting it in the display. “I’ll probably be terrible.”

“Playing euchre is like riding a bike. You never forget. Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll see you there.” Alex whisked out of the store before Grace had a chance to protest.

She might as well go. After all, it was Saturday. She could take a break from doing National Board prep tonight.

§

In the afternoon, Grace walked to the church hall. She was running slightly late.

As she entered the parking lot, Alex drove up in a battered white pickup.

“Howdy, pardner,” Alex called to her. “Ready to win?” She jumped down from the driver’s seat and smoothed her bandana print skirt.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Grace said. “I can’t promise to be good.”

“Nonsense, you were great in high school. Just use that schoolteacher brain of yours and you’ll be fine.” Alex started toward the church hall, Grace hurrying after her.

The church hall was a modest-sized building. Today it was crowded with round tables. Near the door, Dorothy and Elaine were setting out cookies and lemonade.

Dorothy hurried over to Grace and Alex. “Just in time,” she said. “We need two more people. You two can play against Doc and Hannah.”

Oof. Doc and Hannah?

Across the room, Doc and Hannah sat opposite each other. Doc was saying something, and Hannah was laughing.

Grace scanned the rest of the room. Weren’t there any other tables that needed people? Apparently not. Maybe she could get somebody to switch with her and Alex.

Alex elbowed her. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Doc and I don’t get along,” Grace hissed at her.

Alex’s eyebrows drew together. “Huh? You get along with everybody. Besides, it’s the only table left.”

Grace sighed. Alex was right.

But she would probably make a fool of herself and do terribly at this game, if the recent pattern still held. She seemed fated to embarrass herself in front of Doc all summer.

Doc and Hannah looked up as Grace and Alex approached.

“Hey,” Doc said. “Look who showed up. It looks like we’ll be playing euchre after all.” He pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket. “Dorothy said they were running short, so I brought my own.”

“How do we know it’s not a marked deck?” Grace asked.

Doc raised an eyebrow. “You can take my word for it, or you can scrutinize every card. Your choice.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Grace sat at the near side of the table. Alex went around.

Hannah nodded toward the two newcomers. Was it Grace’s imagination, or did she look less than thrilled to have them there? Hannah was dressed up for a Saturday afternoon—she wore a white dress that showed off her tan, long earrings, and sunglasses on top of her head. She always had sunglasses. Maybe her eyes were sensitive to the sun. Doc wore a polo shirt and khakis.

“Good thing you came,” Doc said. “We were about to go play tennis instead.”

Hannah raised an eyebrow at him. “You still owe me a match to make up for that one you missed.”

Somebody tapped a microphone, and all heads swiveled toward the sound. It was Dorothy.

“It’s time to start,” Dorothy said. “If anybody has questions or disagreements about the rules of euchre, Elaine and I both have rulebooks, so just come find us. There’s also a suggested donation for the cookies and lemonade. The pro-life group at St. Anthony’s will use the donations to buy baby clothes and diapers for local moms who need assistance. You can start playing whenever you want.”

“Ready, Hannah?” Doc asked.

Hannah flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’m ready.”

Grace gave Alex a double thumbs-up. “Good luck, pardner!”

“Yippee!” Alex said. “Come on, Doc, separate the deck.”

Doc separated the cards and dealt the first hand. Either he was purposely giving Grace bad cards, or she had rotten luck. No matter which suit ended up chosen as trump—the highest-ranking suit for the round—she couldn’t win anything when her hand was mostly nines and tens.

“You start, Grace,” Doc said.

The players first had to decide which suit would be trump. The face-up card on the table was the queen of diamonds. Grace didn’t have a lot of diamonds. “Pass,” she said.

Hannah took a long time to look at her cards. Maybe she hadn’t played this game much. Or maybe it was part of her strategy. “Pass,” she said.

“Pass,” Alex said, poker-faced.

Doc discarded a card and picked up the queen of diamonds. “Diamonds are trump.”

Unless Alex had great cards, she and Grace were losing this hand. Grace’s only diamond was a nine. Since she sat to the left of the dealer, she had to go first. She put down the nine of clubs.

Hannah put down the jack of diamonds. What in the world? Why waste the jack of diamonds—the highest card—on a nine?

Doc’s eyebrows went up at his partner’s action, but he didn’t say anything. Hannah took that trick.

Doc took the next trick—which started out with spades, a non-trump suit—with the ten of diamonds. Even a low trump card would beat a card of a different suit. But Doc couldn’t have played that unless he didn’t have any spades.

“You don’t have any spades?” Alex asked. “I’ll remember that.”

Doc grinned. “I believe you.”

It was his turn to start. He placed down the jack of hearts. The jack of the same color as the trump suit counted as a trump card too. No wonder Doc had picked up that diamond—he seemed to have no end of trump cards. Grace played the nine of diamonds. Hannah played the queen of clubs.

“Wait a minute,” Alex said. “Hannah, you reneged. Grace played a club in the first trick, and you played the jack of diamonds.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Grace said.

Doc whistled and sat back against his chair.

Hannah looked annoyed. “What did I do?”

“You were supposed to follow suit when I played the club in the first round,” Grace said. “You can only play a different suit if you don’t have the suit that’s being played.”

“Oh. Whoopsie. Can I just take the card back?” Hannah flipped her hair back.

Alex shook her head. “Catching the other team reneging is two points for us.”

Doc slid his remaining cards to the center of the table. “She’s right, Hannah,” he said. “It’s okay. People make mistakes. Let’s go on. Grace, it’s your deal.”

Imagine getting two points out of such a lousy hand. Grace marked the two points. She shuffled the cards and dealt.

It became clear as the game went on that Hannah had no idea how to play. She wasted her highest cards on tricks that didn’t need them; she played cards that trumped Doc’s cards when he was already winning a trick; she reneged yet again. Doc’s self-restraint surprised Grace. If she were Hannah’s partner, she would be dancing up and down at this point. Doc must like Hannah—that was the only possible explanation. He could put up with her poor euchre playing as long as he got to spend time hanging out with her.

Well, who cared? It wasn’t as though Grace was interested in Doc or anything.

“I’ve got an idea,” Alex said after Hannah’s second renege. “Hannah, why don’t you go to Dorothy or Elaine and get a quick refresher on the rules, and we can take a break for cookies and lemonade?”

Hannah looked indignant, but Doc nodded. “It shouldn’t take too long to skim the rules,” he told her. “We’ll still be here when you get back.”

Hannah made her way to the rules table, and Grace, Alex, and Doc went for the refreshments.

“Gluten-free peanut butter cookies.” Alex took two. “I’ll bet the diner donated them. Charlie always makes them. He says they’re the easiest kind to make because they only have three ingredients.”

“It’s probably hard to burn yourself making them, too,” Doc said. “How’s your hand, Grace? Made any more apple crisp lately?”

“With this enormous bandage on my hand?” Grace asked. “I’m taking a break from baking. But I’m going to start up again as soon as my hand’s better. The things I made before sold out really quickly.”

They returned to their table supplied with cookies and lemonade. From the well-filled donation basket, it looked like the pro-life group would be able to help a lot of mothers.

Hannah was still at Dorothy and Elaine’s table, listening to Elaine explain euchre rules. Grace stifled a smile. Elaine liked to explain things. By the time she finished, Hannah would know the rules, all right. But it might be a while.

Doc leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out under the table in a way that left no room for anybody else’s feet. “So how long have you two been playing euchre?”

“My uncle Angelo taught me and my brother one Christmas at our lola’s—our grandmother’s,” Alex said. “My cousins and I used to play it a lot.”

Doc looked at Grace.

“My dad taught me,” Grace said. “My brother Thomas and I used to play against him and my sister Katie. Dad and Katie always won.”

“You oughtta challenge them to a rematch,” Doc said. “I bet you’d give them a run for their money now.”

Was that a compliment? “Thanks,” Grace said. “But we don’t all get together very much. Katie lives downstate and Thomas is in Florida.”

Doc sat forward, resting his arms on the table. “Now how did you all get scattered so far from each other? Michigan, Florida, California. That’s a long way!”

How had they gotten scattered to the far-flung reaches of the United States? It would take some explaining. It wasn’t that Grace’s family members disliked each other—their careers, as adults, had ended up putting them far apart physically.

“I’m back,” a voice said.

Hannah appeared next to Doc, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Can we start playing again? Elaine told me the rules about ten times.”

“Suits me,” Grace said. “Whose deal is it?”

“Mine,” Alex said. “Hand me those cards, Doc, will you?”

They were in the middle of the next hand—Doc and Hannah had taken two tricks—when Doc’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Whoops,” he said, looking at the screen. “Gotta go. Medical emergency.”

Hannah groaned. “Just when things were getting good. Text you later, Doc.”

“Sure,” Doc said absently, pocketing his phone. “Keep the cards—Grace can give them back to me anytime. See you around.”

He strode away, leaving the three girls with an incomplete euchre table.

“That poor guy never gets any fun.” Hannah shook her head. “I’m going home. We can’t play without four people.”

“We could see if Dorothy or Elaine will play with us,” Alex suggested. “One person ought to be enough to man the rulebook table.”

“That’s all right,” Hannah said. “I’ve got things to do anyway. I’ve got to edit a video for my channel.”

She got her straw purse from the back of the chair and left Grace and Alex sitting at the table.

“Maybe Dorothy and Elaine can both play with us,” Grace said. “If somebody comes along and asks about the rules we can just pause the game.”

“Let’s try it.”

“It’ll be more fun playing with them, anyway.”

Alex laughed. “More fun than watching Hannah pretend she knew what she was doing, when it was obvious she had no clue? I thought it was hilarious.”

Grace laughed too. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so confident and so terrible at the same time.”

Clearly, Hannah had only been there to spend time with Doc. If those two weren’t dating, Grace figured it was only a matter of time before they were. They were both attractive and athletic, probably wealthy—of course they’d be interested in each other. But what was the point of Hannah blundering through a game she didn’t know how to play and didn’t even seem to like? Grace just couldn’t understand Hannah. Maybe she’d understand her better if she checked out her video channel sometime.