In this short story from Ruth Rendell’s The Fallen Curtain, an eleven year old girl joins a classmate and her family for a summer in the countryside. But what should be a dream vacation becomes something closer to a nightmare, when a neighbor delivers an unexpected gift—a vinegar mother—that reveals fault lines below the surface of a seemingly happy marriage. An ominous and unsettling story of trouble in paradise, The Vinegar Mother is an utterly gripping tale from the grande dame of the literary mystery. A Vintage Short.