Chapter Thirty-Seven
“He’s right about that,” Kelly comments, turning up the volume as they stop for a light.
Caleb, strapped in back, wearing light-blue board shorts imprinted with smiling red lobsters, asks, “Who’s right about what, Aunt Kelly?”
“Bono. Listen. He’s singing about a beautiful day, and that’s what this is.”
“It is,” Talia agrees. “Poor Midge, having to work and miss everything.”
“I wonder if—oh no!” Spotting the CVS at the next intersection, Kelly slaps the steering wheel. “I forgot to have my mom’s new medication delivered this morning.”
“Isn’t one of her aides around to pick it up? Or the housekeeper?”
“You mean Mrs. ‘I work for Beverly, not you, and my job doesn’t include running all over town in the heat’ Verga?” Kelly shakes her head. “What a miserable old b—”
“Kelly!”
“Biddy,” Kelly corrects, flashing her a beatific smile. “I’ll have to stop and get the prescription and then drop it off at my mom’s. But I promise this won’t take long, and then we’ll get right to the beach so we have enough time before the storm blows in.”
“I don’t like storms.”
In the rearview mirror, Kelly sees that Caleb’s eyes are round and worried beneath the brim of his red bucket hat.
“You know what? I forgot. That forecast wasn’t for today,” Kelly says. “It’s probably from yesterday.”
“You forget a lot of things,” Caleb says.
“I guess I’m turning into an old biddy too. But I really do love this song.” Kelly turns the radio up a notch, singing along.
Talia joins in. Even Caleb catches on, bellowing the chorus with them until the song ends.
“That was U2 with ‘Beautiful Day,’” the DJ says. “And now for another hit single from the year 2000, here’s Britney Spears with the title track from her second album, Oops! . . . I Did It A—”
Kelly jabs the button, changing the station.
“Wait, I want to sing another fun song,” Caleb protests.
“We will,” Talia says. “This is the nineties station. They’ll have lots of good songs, right, Aunt Kelly?”
“Right. Just not this one,” she says, wincing as Billy Ray Cyrus twangs about his achy breaky heart. “Let’s try the eighties.”
She presses the button again and grins. “Now we’re talking. Who likes the Cure?”
“I don’t know if I do,” Caleb says.
“Listen. They’re great. Right, Talia?”
Talia says nothing.
Kelly glances over and sees her friend looking troubled.
“Tal’? Everything okay?”
“I’m not sure. I think . . . either Midge made a mistake, or that DJ did.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Oops! . . . I Did It Again was released in 2000, then how was that CD in Caroline’s Walkman in 1999?”