The Black Heart Crypt

Virginia “Ginny” Jennings and her two sisters, Hannah and Sophie, were eating breakfast poolside at their condo complex in Boca Raton, Florida.

Ginny had brought along Pyewacket, her white-and-gray cat, who sat purring contentedly in her lap.

Breakfast for Ginny was a banana and an English muffin. Her sister Hannah was mixing fiber powder in a glass of prune juice, while Sophie had a gooey cheese Danish, a package of little powdered doughnuts, and a foil-wrapped pair of Pop-Tarts.

It was early morning, but the sun, blindingly bright and glimmering off the pool, had already baked the southern tip of Florida to a muggy eighty-six degrees, which was why Ginny always wore flowery Hawaiian muumuus—loose-fitting dresses with ample armpit room for breezy ventilation.

Hannah, on the other hand, wore prim blouses (with the collar buttoned) under cardigan sweaters, while Sophie, who was rather plump, came down to the pool each morning decked out in polka dots, which made her look like a bouquet of balloons.

A young man shoved a wheelchair up to the table next to the sisters’.

“Wait here while I get your food, Uncle Gus,” he said to the shrunken man sitting in it, who was wearing a flimsy flannel bathrobe.

“Eh?” The old man brought a trembling hand up to his hairy ear.

“I SAID WAIT HERE!” Then he added under his breath, “You deaf old fart.”

Ginny gasped.

The horrible nephew whirled around to face her.

“Mind your business, you old hag.”

He stomped away.

Pyewacket the cat hissed at his back—three times.

“Sisters,” said Ginny, “I believe the brinded cat hath hissed thrice.”

“Virginia?” said Hannah, quite sternly. “We are retired. How many times must I remind you?”

“But …”

“Re-tired. To this, we three did agree, did we not?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, a blizzard of white powdered doughnut sugar showering down on her ample bosom. “We did. I remember. We agreed.”

Ginny sighed.

“Of course, Hannah,” she said. “You are correct. We are retired.”

* * *

Birds chirped. Uncle Gus wheezed in the wheelchair. Hannah snapped open her very organized plastic pillbox and prepared to pop her daily regimen of anti-everything medication. Sophie nibbled a chocolate-frosted Pop-Tart. Ginny peeled open her banana and sipped ice water through a straw.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Ginny. “You’ll never guess who I exchanged text messages with last week.”

“Text messages?” said Hannah. “What on earth are those?”

“Why, I suppose you could say they are postcards you can read on your telephone.”

“How?” inquired Hannah, tossing her head back to swallow her pills the way a pelican swallows a fish.

“You read the message on the screen.”

“I don’t really like telephones,” said Sophie with a quivering giggle. “They’re a bit like children, aren’t they? Always making noise, always insisting that you answer them immediately.”

The comment saddened Ginny. She and her sisters had never married, never had children. All three were what were once called spinsters.

That was why all three had always doted on their only nephew, Georgie, the son of their brother, James. Of course, Georgie was all grown up now, a very important lawyer in New York City, living in North Chester, Connecticut, the Jennings family’s ancestral home.

Georgie even had a son of his own, a boy named Zachary, whom the aunts had not spent much time with, because his mother, a rather dour woman named Susan, had made it frightfully clear that her husband’s aged aunts were not welcome in the young family’s swanky New York City apartment.

The three sisters had, however, returned to New York after Susan’s untimely death and, more happily, eighteen months later, for George’s second wedding, when he married the lovely and talented Judy Magruder.

Ginny pulled a sleek cell phone out of her purse, swiped her fingers across its glass face, turning it on, and set it down on the table.

A faint smile creased Hannah’s sour lips. “So, tell us, Virginia: How is Georgie?”

“How’s Zack?” asked Sophie, her eyes sparkling like sugared plums. “And Judy? I liked Judy.”

“They’re all fine,” said Ginny.

Suddenly, her cell phone started vibrating.

“Oh, my!” gasped Sophie, fanning her hands, making her upper arms jiggle. “It’s alive!”

“No, Sophie,” said Ginny. “That simply means I have received a new text message.”

She glanced at the screen.

“Oh, dear. I should have turned my phone on earlier! We must fly home to North Chester. Immediately. Georgie needs us!”