Jacqueline confides in Mom

They did not show their surprise.

After church Jacqueline and her mother prepared an elaborate lunch, while they snacked on fruit and had coffee. It was their family tradition to have a late lunch, even when they had guests over.

Mother and daughter discussed events which had occurred during the past week, while Jacqueline’s father occasionally read some parts of his newspaper out aloud. He did this so that mother and daughter could give their opinion about anything which either intrigued or appalled him. He sat and read by his chair at the window.

As Jacqueline prepared to remove the roast potatoes from the oven and add them to the other dishes on the dinner table, she had a sudden compulsion to confide in her mother, “Mom, was grandmother Maria really a fortune teller?”

“She could see into the future, that’s what,” Jacqueline’s mother replied.

“So she was either a prophet or a psychic, as people would say today,” her mother continued.