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Being old should’ve made Margaret Domzalski a heavy sleeper. Having two five-year-old boys in the house meant otherwise. Thus, Margaret woke up to the barely audible thump in the night. Immediately, she reached for Vraxel’s old battle axe, before remembering she’d finally taken it to her husband’s final resting place when her grandson moved in permanently. So Margaret snatched up the pepper spray she kept in her bedside drawer instead.
Reminding herself an enemy that didn’t know she was a threat was an unprepared enemy, Margaret crept toward her living room. Nothing stirred. No suspicious shadows or creaks of the floorboards. No lights that weren’t supposed to be on. Not even the cats were up. Some lookouts they turned out to be. Maybe Vraxel had been right about them. Margaret glanced once at the snoozing cats lining the stairs up to little Toby’s room. No, she still loved her fluffykinses. Also, none had moved from their spots since she’d gone to bed. If there was an intruder, they hadn’t gone upstairs. The boys were safe.
Margaret took a deep breath to calm herself and prepared for a fight, or to guilt a burglar for robbing a poor, defenseless, elderly woman. There were some perks, after all, to being old. Figuring a genuine troll battle cry would’ve been a bit much, Margaret opted for an old lady yell instead as she flicked on the living room lights and charged into the room.
Toby’s best friend, Jim, jumped from his perch on the couch, got tangled in the blanket he’d dragged downstairs with him, and fell in a heap on the floor. Within a second, the five-year-old was up and facing her with a child’s I-don’t-wanna-get-in-trouble, perfectly innocent smile on his face.
All thoughts of battle forgotten, Margaret rushed forward, and proceeded to check over the boy. “Jim? Oh dearie, are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Domzalski.” Jim brushed her off and gathered up as much as he could of the blanket in his arms. Since it was quite a bit bigger than him, most of it remained in a heap at his feet. “I’ll go to bed now.” He edged toward the door.
Now that there was no impending danger, Margaret’s focus turned entirely on the boy in front of her. In a way only a grandmother could, she picked up Jim’s blanket and gently wrapped it around him, effectively pinning him to the spot. He was, as she’d learned chasing both him and Toby around the house at bedtime, significantly faster than her.
“Dearie, why are you out of bed? Did you have a bad dream?” Ignoring Jim’s protests, Margaret lifted boy and blanket up and plopped them down on the couch. She wouldn’t push it too much if he didn’t want to talk, but a part of her had a sneaking suspicion on why he was up and that was something she couldn’t just let go. “You can tell nana all about it.”
Jim didn’t answer, and instead chose to pick stray lint off his blanket and neatly place it in a pile next to him. Only when the golden headlights of their neighbors, the Smiths’ car, back from yet another late night at a museum exhibit, briefly peered in through the big, bay window behind the couch did Jim react. He leapt up, his feet destroying his mini lint mountain as they scrambled for a perch on the couch seat. His eyes followed the progress of the car around the cul-de-sac and into the right driveway. Both he and Margaret observed Mr. and Mrs. Smith exiting the car, locking it, and entering their house. No other car came in the quiet minutes after, so Jim slid down to sitting again. Carefully, he remade his lint mountain and resumed picking apart the blanket.
“How about we have a nice cookie and a warm glass of milk?” Margaret didn’t wait for Jim to answer before pushing herself up and shuffling to the kitchen. When she came back, she quietly handed Jim a plate of three, chocolate chip-heavy cookies and placed a tall glass of warm milk on the coffee table in front of him. She waited for him to start nibbling before gently reminding him, “Your mother’ll be back in the morning. She’s working very hard to help all those people at the clinic get better.”
“I know. She told me earlier. On the phone.” Jim politely placed the plate of cookies on the table and pushed himself up. “She’s not like Dad,” he added, his voice barely a whisper. He checked the window once more, but the night outside remained unchanged.
“No, she’s not. She loves you very much.” Margaret couldn’t help but reach out to Jim. He didn’t lean in to her embrace, but he did sit down next to her again. She took that as a victory.
Jim looked up at her, then quickly down at the cookie plate. His fingers curled tightly around the plate. He softly asked it the question, “Can I wait for Mom a bit? I’ll be quiet.”
Margaret wrapped an arm around Jim and squeezed him a little too tightly. “I suppose you need time to finish those cookies. How would you like a story, dearie?”
So, for the next hour and a half, Margaret regaled Jim with tales of brave knights, dragons, and, of course, trolls. For what kind of wife would Margaret be if she didn’t use her and her late husband’s misadventures as inspiration for stories to tell a little boy? And, if that boy eventually yawned, snuggled up against her side, and drifted off to sleep, she didn’t really mind. Margaret resigned her achy, old lady self to a night spent on the couch. Would she have preferred the comfort of her own bed? Yes. Was she willing to potentially wake Jim up by moving him? No.
Just after dawn, Margaret awoke to the clatter of a car outside hitting a toppled garbage can. Without opening her eyes, she listened to the muted sounds of the car parking and its person getting out to mutter a few choice words for the raccoons that seemed to never stop plaguing the neighborhood. Margaret bit back a laugh at that. Raccoons, indeed. It was good to know the old timers at Trollmarket still got around.
Only when footsteps approached her door did Margaret open her eyes and carefully extricate herself from being Jim’s pillow. She managed to make it to the door before Barbara Lake knocked only because the doctor looked far too exhausted from yet another long shift to do anything too quickly. For a motionless moment, the two women simply looked at each other from either side of the doorway. Then Margaret gestured Jim’s mother in.
Barbara gathered Jim up in her arms and took him home.