The Usual Family Mayhem

Chapter Four

You make things hard. I continued grumbling about Jackson’s comment all last night and from the second my feet hit the floor this morning. After a short caffeine break I intended to go back to grumbling.

First, breakfast. As usual, Gram beat me downstairs to the kitchen. No matter what time I got up, Gram got up earlier. She had an internal alarm clock that ensured she was the one to make tea and warm the muffins. I loved that about her. I also loved sleeping in. The crisp sheets and soft, but not too soft, mattress made the bed in this house my favorite bed in the world.

Gram stared out the window over the sink and across the backyard. “Why are you scowling?”

My butt barely hit the breakfast bar stool before Gram launched that one. “You’re not even looking at me.”

“I can hear you frowning.”

“That’s not a thing.”

Was it? I mean, she did always seem to know what I was about to do or say. She had all kinds of spooky skills.

She turned to face me, showing off her bright pink zip-up robe with the big yellow flowers. The thing was over the top, which was how I knew it was perfect when I bought it for her for Christmas. She sipped tea from her “Cool Grandmother Club”

mug, another perfect gift.

The morning was one of the rare times she swapped out her beloved iced sweet tea for something warm. Morning and whenever she poked around in my feelings about something—first boys, now men, my career goals, my worries about paying the rent. Earl Grey was her go-to let’s have a chat hot beverage and had been since I hit middle school.

On a regular day, starting at about eleven, no matter what time of year, hot or cold outside, she reached for sweet tea over ice, served in the same pitcher she’d inherited from her mother. She actually owned many pitchers. She had a group of clear glass carafes of different sizes with glass handles and rounded bottoms. We used those for company.

Her favorite, the family-only one, was a cheap plastic pitcher passed down from generation to generation. It had a simple green flower on the side and matching lid with a push button in the middle. You pressed that to break the seal and take the top off.

One of Gram’s greatest disappointments came the day fifteen-year-old me suggested her favorite iced beverage basically consisted of a bag of sugar with a little bit of black tea mixed in. So, a liquid dessert and not a very good one.

I wasn’t wrong. She liked her tea heavy on the sugar and didn’t appreciate my pointing that out. She’d actually gasped at my audacity then insisted she had to leave the room because she needed a minute. We never spoke of my iced sweet tea betrayal again.

“Do you want me to help today?”

Gram eyed me over her mug. “With what?”

Honestly, I’d made the offer since it seemed like the right thing to do. The whole respect your elders thing and all. Her skepticism made me double down. “Cleaning?”

She snorted.

Good choice since cleaning was not my thing. But I had to have a thing and it was about time I found it. “Okay, cooking.”

Gram took a long sip then set her mug down on the bar with a clink. “You mean baking. We bake.”

“Yeah, forget that.”

Me helping in the kitchen sounded like an invitation to food poisoning. “I could help with business paperwork. Gather up—”

“No.”

Whoa. That answer came fast and hard. I’d been recruited to wash dishes, stir, and perform other baking assistant tasks over the years. By “recruited”

I meant ordered to do certain things. This one time I initiated and offered to pitch in on a non-tasting-related chore and Gram shut it down. Apparently she loved paperwork and didn’t want to share.

Still, I could be a team player. “I thought you might need—”

“That part of the business is handled. It’s fine.”

The odd snap in her voice didn’t sound fine. It seemed like we were having one conversation out loud and one unspoken, only I couldn’t keep up with the silent one. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course.”

She waved a hand in the air, which was Grandma code for find another topic.

Gram wasn’t a yeller. She didn’t need to raise her voice to make her point when she could pull out the look. It consisted of one arched eyebrow, a grim expression, and an unblinking stare. The kind of stare that bored through you and slammed into the wall behind you.

I’d spent most of my life trying not to tick her off and remembered with painful clarity every instance where I’d failed. The time as a teenager when I crawled out my upstairs window and went to meet friends. The day I drove the car into the garage door because I was texting rather than paying attention. The big misstep where I took twenty dollars from her purse without asking. In my defense, I was only ten during the last one and the guilt ate at me until I fessed up.

Gram’s warm smile returned. “I made cinnamon muffins. Would you like one or two?”

If she wanted to divert my attention with food . . . well, it worked. I split the muffin in half and let the spicy aroma fill the air. I could swim in a bucket of these and eat my way out. That was the fantasy.

While I ate, Gram cleaned this and rearranged that. The years did nothing to tame her need for constant motion. She was this little ball of energy. Five-foot-one, though she insisted she was closer to five-three. Every inch of her determined and sassy and ready to defend. I was a solid six inches taller than her actual height, but she could outmaneuver me physically and verbally.

My theory was that she lived life at a sprint to keep the bad memories from catching up with her. If she stuck to her racing pace, she could outrun the pain and destruction that defined so much of her adulthood.

She’d lived long and survived some heartbreaking shit. Growing up with a father who spent most of his life sucking down whatever alcohol he could find only to escape to a husband who used his fists to carry his side of the conversation. The men in her life taught her to be on guard. Losing my mom, Gram’s daughter, by her son-in-law’s hand shaped everything that came after, including raising me to be bold, fight back, and detest violent men, especially the one who made my existence possible.

Gram buzzed around the room, keeping her hands moving. Once she wiped down the counter, she started taking baking pans out of cabinets. The bang of precooking preparations sounded like music to me. Familiar and comforting. Soon the house would fill with the delicious scent of some variety of cupcakes.

Most of the work for Mags’ Desserts, the name of Gram and Celia’s business, took place in here. The smaller room next to this one had once been a pantry. It now served as a supply area with two dishwashers that ran what felt like constantly.

The cooking space had been extended and updated several times over the years, swallowing up an office and the formal dining room. They’d invested tens of thousands of dollars in appliances and baking equipment, including a fancy oven that required reinforced flooring, updated electrical outlets, and a special vent hood before it could be installed.

A baking annex converted what had once been my grandfather’s separate garage and workshop into the overflow area with a table for afternoon tea and recipe tasting as well as some offices. The multiple spaces helped the operation run at peak efficiency. Just like everything else in Gram’s life.

I finished off a cinnamon muffin and reached for a second. “I can’t get these in DC. Except that one time I found them in the grocery store, but they didn’t taste the same.”

Gram stopped moving. “You bought muffins in a grocery store?”

Shock. Confusion. The same tone she might use if I told her I’d robbed a bank. Gram had pulled out her I am horrified voice.

Laughter from the doorway saved me from answering. Celia walked into the room in her usual hanging-around-the-house outfit. An oversized long sleeve top and matching lounge pants. She had a set in every color and wore them because “North Carolina gets colder each year.”

Never mind that it was seventy-five today, warmer than usual for late March.

“Grocery store muffins? Honestly, Kasey. What were you thinking?”

Celia gave me a hug before heading straight for the coffeemaker.

I hated to state the obvious but did anyway. “People usually buy food in a grocery store.”

Gram’s expression could only be described as grim. “Muffins should not be bought in the same place you buy garbage bags.”

That wasn’t a bad argument. But Winston-Salem was the home of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which suggested pastries could be bought in all kinds of places. I decided not to point that out.

“You need to find an appropriate bakery.”

Gram rummaged through the catch-all drawer and took out a pad and pen. “Better yet, we can send you muffins and other items like we used to when you were in college. Maybe once a week?” Gram waved her hand in the air again. “We can come up with a schedule.”

I never wanted to say yes to anything so much in my life. “If you do I won’t be able to fit into my apartment.”

Gram dropped the pen. “You worry too much about your weight.”

Not anymore . . . or not as much as I used to. I’d been trying to break the I’m not good enough habit I picked up in college. My fellow students had been blond and beautiful, which by comparison made me look like an evil troll. The differences morphed into a defeatist attitude that pummeled me until the hair debacle. The day I looked in the mirror after dyeing my brown hair blond was the last day I wished for blond hair. Some people were meant to be brunettes.

It took most of my post-college years to silence the judgmental voice in my head. I decided my secret part-time job shouldn’t consist of fussing and worrying as I counted every calorie like I was training for an Olympic event. Even as the real world pushed and pulled at me to be dissatisfied with my size, my face, my hair . . . my everything, I fought back.

The whole weight topic annoyed me, so I pivoted. “I feel like we’ve gotten off topic.”

Gram snorted. The first of the day.

Celia slid onto the stool next to mine. “Which was?”

“Me helping out around here.”

Celia stopped in mid–coffee sip. “With what?”

Not the elated and relieved reaction I’d hoped for, but I was in the conversation now and not backing down. “Business stuff.”

Celia frowned over the top of her mug. “Which means?”

This sounded like an interrogation. “I don’t know. Computer input. Paperwork. Filing.”

This time Celia slowly lowered her mug to the counter. “Filing what?”

Gram delivered a fresh plate of muffins to the breakfast bar and put them in front of me. They were small. I could have at least one more.

Gram shook her head. “She wants to be our helper all of a sudden.”

That tone followed by the second snort of the morning. Not a great start to the conversation. “What’s happening right now? You two always wanted me to take an interest in the business and I am.”

Celia stared at Gram. Gram stared back. I could almost see the unspoken comments jumping back and forth between them.

Celia put her hand on my forearm and gave it a squeeze. “We want you to relax, honey. Eat some delicious, healing food and enjoy the sunshine.”

They wanted me out of their business. I didn’t need a law degree to figure that out.

I’d taken for granted they had the money they needed. As a kid I never thought about it. Everything—clothes, food, books—just showed up. As an adult, I’d assumed the business expansion paid the bills, but it made sense they might be struggling financially and vowed to hide that struggle from me. They lived in a huge house. There were two of them, two incomes, but they shared the same job and keeping the lights on in this place couldn’t be easy.

Whenever I’d asked about paying for the kitchen renovations or my undergrad education in the past, Gram changed the subject or shooed me away. I let her because she was proud and convincing . . . and it was easier on me not to know the details.

She’d once mentioned the inheritance she’d gotten from her terrible husband. That and life insurance. Sitting there, I questioned all of it. Would an abusive man really make sure the wife he regularly attacked had future financial security?

Celia and Gram stared at me now with their rosy cheeks and big eyes. Love wrapped around the kitchen like a warm blanket. But this time there was an underlying unease. These two were hiding something. Maybe they did need help and we’d all gotten lucky. NOI could swoop in and save the day . . . and my job . . . and their livelihoods.

The last time they hid something from me it was huge and nearly ended in a catastrophe.

We weren’t doing that again.

These two cuties possessed James Bond–level skills when it came to sparing me from what they considered to be bad news. That left me with few choices, the most obvious being snooping, which sucked. The only thing Gram hated near as much as crappy men was anyone touching her stuff.

Over the years, I’d been accused of being a bit dramatic. Totally unwarranted, of course, but even I could admit my current not right feeling might stem from a combination of stress and an active imagination rather than any real problem. So, no searching. For now. I’d listen and watch for the next few days. I had to be careful and focused.

Unfortunately, I lacked both skills.