Chapter 20
20
Charley
T he nights are getting colder. Cade drops me off, my lips still buzzing from when he thoroughly kissed me after tonight’s home game. I’m not going to lie, it’s nice that he knows about my dad and my house now for the sheer fact that getting dropped off and picked up is a lot nicer than walking in this cold weather.
He waits until my hand hits the gate and I’m walking toward the house before he pulls away from the curb. I turn to wave at him, staying in place while I watch his red taillights disappear in the distance.
“Charlotte?”
I freeze. A familiar warmth encompasses me, but it’s quickly drowned out by icy panic. I turn to see a woman walking toward me, her silver hair glinting in the moonlight. A scarf adorns her neck, and her cheeks are red, eyes dewy.
I take a deep breath and turn.
“Please don’t walk away.” Her aged voice stops me, cracking a little. “You remember me, don’t you?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering sitting at a kitchen island, the countertop dusted with flour. My grandma in her apron rolling out dough. Her hair was brown then, but she had the same wrinkles near her eyes.
The same my mom had in every picture I’ve ever seen of her.
“It took you long enough.”
Countless times I’ve seen her, watching from her car or showing up at school pickup. She would sit in the swing and watch me leave school and walk toward home. Lately, I’ve seen her on this street, just there. Behind her, I see her little silver car, headlights still on, plumes of smoke rising from the muffler.
“I’m not here with excuses. Your dad…” Her hand comes up to cover her mouth, fingers shaking. “I’m sorry,” she interrupts her own thought. “It has taken me long enough.”
I don’t know what to do. Or say. The thing about being isolated for so long is that I don’t know what to do in situations like this. I wish Cade was here. He’d probably introduce himself and she’d be grinning like a fool in no time, overcome by his charm.
But he doesn’t have the past we do.
I don’t know what happened, really. All I know is that my grandparents stopped spending time with me. I stopped spending the night at their house. They stopped picking me up from school. One day they wanted me, and the next, they didn’t.
“Your grandpa passed away earlier this year.”
My heart pinches. I only have early memories of him, too. A kind face, rough hands when my little fist was in his. There were trips to the park and help on the monkey bars.
“I’m…I’m sorry.”
I peek up at her, and a single tear runs down the topography of her face, like a map of her life. Every wrinkle a story. Every blemish a tale of a life lived.
“He wanted me to try again, and so I’ve been watching. Wondering if you remember me. Wondering if I’d have to re-introduce myself. Wondering if you might welcome me into your life. You’re in college now, and we’re both so proud.”
“Yeah, it’s hard…” I admit, trying to give her something but also not knowing what. Life would be so much easier if you could say what you wanted to say without fear of repercussions.
“And you have a boyfriend.”
My face blazes, and I hope she’s not been spying on me too hard. I don’t know what she might see when we’re together. “Cade,” I say because him? Him I can talk about. “He’s a football player for the team. Wide receiver. He’s really good.”
“Oh? Your grandpa liked football. Your dad, too.”
“Yeah. I’ve been working for the coach. Dad got me the job. Just an assistant, but it’s nice.”
“Yeah?” she asks, taking a tentative step closer. “You like it?”
I shrug. “It gets me out of the house and puts some money in my pocket.”
She steps into the streetlight, and my stomach flips. I was wrong before about a single tear. Her cheeks are all wet. She brings a gloved hand to her lips. “You’re so pretty. You look like your mama.”
I clamp my jaw shut, willing myself not to react. No one has said that to me in a very long time.
“Have you ever seen her senior picture? You two could be twins.”
I shake my head. I’m not sure if I have or not, but…that’s too difficult for me to process right now. “I’m sorry.”
“No. No, I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about her if I ever got up the nerve to say something. You just looked so happy walking to your house that I… Well, I thought you might be in a good mood to see me, too. Plus, your smile reminded me of your grandfather.”
It hits me then that she has no one. Mom was an only child, and if Grandpa died, it’s just been her. How many times have I thought how alone I was? Even when Dad is around, it doesn’t feel like it. The most we’ve talked was the other day, and that quickly got ruined when I decided for one night that I was going to live my life the way I wanted. That Cade was more important.
I don’t think I knew that was the decision I was making in that moment. Choosing between Cade and Dad, but that’s what it turned out to be. I might’ve felt more guilty if he hadn’t called me that name out of anger.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asks, motioning toward the sidewalk in front of her.
I peer at the house, knowing Dad will be wanting me to cook something for him.
“You don’t have to.”
“No,” I say right away. “I want to.”
The gate squeaks, metal grating on metal. My grandma peers up at the house then, and shame washes over me as I latch it back up. “I need to fix that.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Charlotte. I know.”
“I like being called Charley now.”
“Charley?”
I nod, and she smiles, her lips small. For an older woman, she walks well enough, easily falling into step beside me.
“I walk with a group of women nearly every morning. Silver Sneakers. I can’t say I like the name, but I like that it keeps me active.”
Great. My grandma has more friends than I do. “That sounds nice.”
“It is. There’s a bit of a talker in the group. More like a nosey neighbor. She gives us all the gossip about her family. She’s far more interesting than anything I have going on.”
“She sounds fun.”
“She’s something. I don’t know if I would call it fun, but the kind of person that keeps things interesting. It’s like a morning soap opera, and all I have to do is show up.”
“How long do you walk?”
“Several miles. They’re putting a lot of distance on these old legs. Some days I have to stay home and soak them, but I’m not nearly as whiny as Peg. Every day we have to hear about her ailments.”
I chuckle. “Yeah? What do you talk about?”
“Nothing. Gerald sometimes. They’re all widows, too, except for Beverly. She’s the talker. Her and her husband and all her kids and grandkids could have a reality show. I swear.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know about, um…” I waver. With all the years of not seeing them, I don’t know what to call them.
“Why don’t you call him Gerald for now? And me Molly? And then we can move on if that sounds like something you’d like to do. No pressure. I have no expectations. I just want you to know…I’ve missed you.”
I stop, and my grandmother walks a few paces ahead of me before doing the same.
“You have?”
She frowns. “Every day. Every day for the last fifteen years.”
I nod slowly, taking her in again. She’s shorter than me, and the last time I remember seeing her, everyone was taller than me—except maybe the cat. “What happened to Happy?”
“Passed over the rainbow bridge a beautiful, smart, spoiled cat.” She smiles. “You still call her Happy.”
“Wasn’t that her name?”
“Her name was Hattie, but you could never say it.” She breaks out into a laugh. “You would get so frustrated when we would correct you, but you’d just hide your face in her fur and whisper Happy .”
“No…” I chuckle. “I don’t remember that.”
“You were so young, my dear. So, so young.” She waves her hand and starts walking again. “Tell me about your boyfriend.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks, and she smiles at me knowingly, her blue eyes sparking with age and wisdom. “That kind of guy, huh?”
“ That kind,” I confirm, even if I can only guess to what she alludes to.
“I think I had the same look when I was first dating your grandfather. He was something else. Handsome. Smart. Funny. You know, I stole him away from the meanest girl in school? I didn’t feel bad about it either.”
A laugh springs up my throat, surprising me.
“Still don’t,” she states. “We had the best life together, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.”
My chest warms with the thought. “Well, I don’t know if I can say Cade and I will be forever, but…it’s nice to think about.”
“He certainly has good manners, dropping you off at home like he’s been doing.”
“I didn’t want him to at first,” I confess. The more our feet trek across the sidewalk, the easier talking with her is. A connection pulls us together. Familial and familiar. “He didn’t know about Dad, and I didn’t really want him to.”
“It must be hard for you to do it all alone.” We’re silent for a few moments, and I wonder if it was wrong to bring up Dad. If what I’ve always suspected is true, and he’s the reason why they stopped picking me up. She probably spoke her mind, and he decided it was time to cut her off.
“How is your dad doing?”
I shrug. I don’t remember how he was the last time she was around, exactly. He’d started to get health problems early. Rapid weight gain. Depression. Things only compounded when the doctors pulled him out of work and there was no reason for him to get out of the house, but I’ve been living with this version of my dad for so long that I can’t remember when it started.
I’d be willing to bet he’s so much worse than he was.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I don’t know what to say. He’s…sick.”
“I haven’t seen him leave the house.”
“He doesn’t.”
She nods like she’d been expecting that. “I would drive by from time to time on my way home from getting groceries. Or make Gerald drive by on Christmas, Thanksgiving. We would sit in the car and hold each other because you were so close, but you were also so far away. That house has been like a fortress, keeping you locked up.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, staring down at the sidewalk. I don’t know what to say.
“Ugh,” she groans in frustration. “I promised myself I wouldn’t. Maybe I could also have my own soap opera. Kick Bev out as the gossiper.” She wrings her hands in front of herself. “Tell me more about…Cade? Was it Cade?”
“Yes, Cade. He’s the wide receiver, and he’s really good. He treats me nice, though I wasn’t very nice to him at first.”
“It’s best to let them know what they’re getting into from the get-go. No issue with that. You don’t want to sugarcoat things and have them expect rainbows and red carpets when all you’re willing to give is a reality check.”
“To be honest, I think he kind of liked it.”
“Good man.” Grandma nods, confirming. “In my experience, men think they want the easy ones, but they don’t. They like the challenge. They want someone with a little spunk. I nearly ran Gerald’s girlfriend over with my car. It was an accident, you see…” Her eyes gleam, and I really think there was no accident about it.
I can’t help but laugh.
“It was, I swear. I’ve sworn so from the day it happened, and I’ll never tell a different story. I mistook the brake for the gas, and there I was, driving my Plymouth straight toward her. I can still remember the look on her face.”
Instead of looking horrified, a grin spreads across her lips.
This is my kind of grandma.
“She got out of my way after that.”
“I bet she did.”
We turn around at the end of the block and start walking toward the house. In the area where there are no streetlights, I peer up at the sky, watching the lights twinkle at me.
“You’re a star watcher, too?”
“They’re pretty. I can see them from my bedroom window.”
“You can see them really well from my house, too.”
“Yeah?”
“This is the part where I tell you I’d like to do this again, Charley. We can keep walking at night. Or we can have dinner together at a restaurant, or at my house. I haven’t cooked for you in years. Do you still like spaghetti?”
“Love it,” I say, wishing I could remember a time when she fixed it for me. It might make it easier to say yes. To clamp onto those memories and give in.
“But don’t feel like you have to say yes.”
For a moment, it feels like another thing I’ll have to keep from my dad. If he didn’t want them seeing me before, I doubt he’s changed his mind now. In a way, it kind of makes me want to do it more.
Look at what he made me miss out on. Now I’ll only have fleeting memories of my grandfather. But there’s still time with Molly.
This little part of me thinks I wouldn’t be having this conversation if it weren’t for Cade coming into my life. I would’ve been too scared to turn around when she called my name. I wouldn’t have taken a walk, just swept all my feelings under the rug like I was used to doing.
“I’d like that,” I tell her. “Any of that. All of it. Maybe.”
She brings her gloved hands to her mouth. “I have so much to pray about today. Thank you.”