Previously in Secret Agent Grandma:
We’ve had two bad endings so far from 1) not figuring out the riddle that “EMPLEH” is “help me” backwards, and 2) not figuring out that the loud noises approaching the train station were a train. So, naturally, Ariel has now decided that our narrator has not figured out that the grandma doppelgänger on the train being kidnapped is our real grandma, and we are willing companions of probably-not-at-all-imposter grandma. This will end well for us.
You must have imagined seeing that other woman. How could you have two grandmas? It’s a dumb idea.
Biologically, everyone in the history of time has had two grandmas, but okay, me.
We catch a cab on page 44. Totally-fine-it’s-fine grandma exhibits some normal behavior in the car.
“Give the driver your address,” she instructs, “and then tell me all about yourself.”
You do as she says. But as you launch into a long story about your brilliant performance at school yesterday, she interrupts you.
“Tell me about the rose garden!” Grandma demands.
Now the rose garden part is definitely odd, but equally odd is that it’s not odd that our parents sent me, a child, to the train station to pick up my grandma who I’ve never met before who is now asking for literally any information about myself, desperate to connect with this stranger to her. This is the normal behavior part of this story.
Totally normal grandma explains her totally normal interest in the family rose garden. (Update: We wrote a bunch of these posts before, coincidentally, there was a sudden national interest in another rose garden, so who is to say what is a “normal” level of interest in the rose garden in this brave new day and age.)
“I lived in the house before your mother and father did. And I planted the eggs in the garden.”
“Eggs?” you repeat. “How could you plant eggs?”
Grandma looks startled. “I meant seeds.”
It’s really nice how we’ve joked for years that the characters in the books we’ve read are definitely aliens pretending to have human conversations, and now it’s finally come true.
Grandma explains that she planted the roses fifteen years ago by “the light of shooting stars”. Blessedly, my character does wonder “Was she always this weird?” There may be hope for me yet. The cab driver struggles to get grandma’s bags out of the trunk. I roast him without mercy.
“What’s the problem?” you ask the struggling cab driver. “Skipped breakfast this morning?”
The hope is squashed as I determine I’m actually just kind of a rude child.
The cab driver and I work together to drag my definitely actual grandma’s luggage to the front door.
The cab driver glances around. “Let’s open them,” he whispers. “I want to know what Grandma has that weighs so much!”
Despite the fact that this cab driver is giving off some real unsettling vibes by referring to this woman not as “your grandma” but as capital-G “Grandma”, the dumber choice did work out well last time. Ariel, we’re opening those bags. Or rather, you are, in your next post, where I hope we don’t encounter our third untimely death on page 85. Or maybe I do! Goosebumps!