8EUGENIA’S FATHER GAPED at Mallory from Meadowlark. “What kind of nursing home are you running?”
“It’s a retirement residence,” Mallory said. “What consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of our concern.”
“So you’re saying this happens a lot?” one of the uncles asked.
“I wouldn’t say a lot.”
“I would.” Fred came forward in his hideous Hawaiian shirt. His gaze swept from the pearl-clutcher to Eugenia’s parents to Mallory from Meadowlark. “You young people are such prudes! If you’d been around in the sixties, you’d have been scandalized—I tell you, scandalized!—by what your parents got up to.”
“Not my parents,” someone grumbled.
“There’s no harm in loving,” said Fred. “Even loving more than one person at a time.”
Mallory’s face turned absolutely ashen as she gaped at t
