Chapter 13
Thirteen
While Valencia finishes making dinner and Marcus goes upstairs to change out of his work clothes, I stay on the deck with
JT and Easton. Since I got here, I’ve seen Easton the least out of everyone in the Beaumont household. Is it because he feels
awkward and doesn’t know where to pick up with the brother he last saw ten years ago?
Or because he knows I’m not really Nate?
JT is in the middle of a story he seems to have been waiting all day to tell. Easton is listening intently, so I watch him.
Trying to figure him out.
“What’s your deal?” Easton turns to look at me.
Shit. How long was I staring at him? And how long did he realize I was staring at him? I shake my head. “Sorry. Thinking about
Mom sending me to a shrink.”
JT’s hand goes right up for another high five. “Nate the Great taking care of his mental health.”
I just stare at JT, leaving his hand in the air. How can someone be so obsessed with high fives?
“Up top!”
I don’t break my gaze, daring him to realize how ridiculous he looks.
“It’s not going to happen,” Easton says, as if he can read my mind. “He’ll keep it there until you do it, so you might as well humor him.”
I lean back in the chair and side-eye JT. “How good is your upper-arm strength, JT?”
He leans forward, his arm steady in the air. “I hand-trim weed for a living. I can do this all day.”
So that’s the kind of farming he does. I take out my phone and start the timer, then place it face up on the table.
“Hello!” A woman’s voice carries around the corner of the house.
Easton turns in that direction and then looks back at me. “Oh boy. Gramma Sharon is here. Can’t wait for you to meet her.”
A short, round white woman with a mess of curly gray hair waddles around the corner of the deck. In her hands she holds two
pie plates covered in tinfoil. She looks to be in her late seventies or early eighties and is wearing a blue floral sundress.
“Easton, be a peach and take these inside for me,” Gramma Sharon says, holding them out to him. He takes them and she turns
her attention to me. Pursing her lips, she gives me a judgment-filled up-and-down. “Nate. Well, you’re not how I remembered
you.”
I’m not sure if it’s a joke or if she knows deep down that I’m not Nate. But before I can dig too much into what she said,
she holds out a hand. I take it and steady her as she slowly moves up the steps onto the deck.
She stops and looks at JT, who is still staring into the distance with his hand up. She sighs. “You’re exactly how I remember
you.” Then she waddles around him, swatting his hand down. I pick up my phone, shutting off the stopwatch.
Gramma Sharon lets out a loud groan as she takes off the orange leather purse slung across her body and lowers herself into one of the chairs.
Then she reaches into the neck of her dress and pulls out a fan.
I almost laugh because the image is so ridiculous.
Was she . . . keeping that fan tucked away under her boobs?
“JT, go get me a glass of water. And have Marcus bring me out a drink.”
“You got it, Gramma.” He jumps up and goes inside. She shakes her head, then turns to look at me as she unfurls the fan.
“Well, sit down.” She kicks out the chair I was sitting in, and I do as she says. While she fans herself with one hand, she
reaches into the orange purse with the other and takes out a pad of paper and a deck of cards. “Do you know how to play gin
rummy?”
“No.”
She nods toward the phone in my hand. “Then look it up. I’m not going to teach you.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting from Gramma Sharon, but this was not it. And I kind of like it? She’s so much less intense
than the Beaumonts. If someone told me she was JT’s grandmother, I would have believed it instantly.
Putting her fan down, Gramma Sharon starts shuffling cards. “Go on. I’m not going easy on you just because you don’t know
how to play!”
I thought she was joking, honestly. But I look up how to play on my phone and she starts dealing. The back door opens and
Marcus comes out with a glass of water and a small glass of brown liquor and ice.
“Good to see you, Sharon.”
She says hello to Marcus and takes a sip of the alcohol. “What is this?”
“We’re out of Jim Beam, so you get the good stuff.”
She scrunches her nose. “If you say so.” And takes another sip.
Marcus eyes up the cards and then turns to me and gives me the exact same better-you-than-me look Easton gave earlier—must
be a family trait. Then he goes back into the house. Easton and JT haven’t come back out yet and I’m getting the feeling no
one really likes to be alone with Gramma Sharon.
“Age before beauty,” she says, gesturing to me. I check my cards to see if I want the one on top of the discard pile. I don’t,
so I tell her to go ahead. She pulls the top card of the deck, then discards a jack. I have two jacks, so I take it.
“So? How’ve you been?” she asks. She pulls from the deck again and discards a two.
How’ve I been? She asks it like she hasn’t seen Nate in a week, not nine-plus years. I look over the top of my cards at her,
but she just fans herself, watching me expectantly. I have no clue how to even answer her, but for the first time, none of
this feels like a trap?
And maybe that’s why everyone else is in the house. They’re scared of her because she doesn’t seem like the kind of woman
you can bullshit. That’s why she’s asking me such a flippant question.
So I give her a flippant answer: “Kidnapped. How ’bout you?” I take a card from the deck and put down a three.
The corner of her mouth quirks slightly, like she’s impressed. Then she picks up the three and puts all her cards down. “Gin.”
I look down and she has an ace, two, my three, and a four—all clubs—a jack, king, and queen—all spades—and three sixes.
“How?” I ask. “That was so fast!”
“Gin’s a fast game, keep up.” She writes down her total and tells me to show my hand. She writes my total in another column
and gathers all the cards to hand over to me. “Shuffle and deal.”
I do as she says.
“What was your kidnapper family like?” she asks. “I see they didn’t feed you.”
“No, that was all the time I spent starving while homeless,” I say quickly. I might be trying for a gotcha moment, but Gramma
Sharon doesn’t even flinch.
“Well then, you get extra of my pies. I brought chocolate chiffon and key lime, so I hope you like both.”
I do. Gramma Sharon makes me smile. There’s something about her gruff, no-nonsense attitude I love. It reminds me of my own
grandmother. My dad’s mom.
My earliest memories are all of her. After I was born, she would watch me during the day while my parents worked. She wasn’t
like them at all. She had a Christian upbringing, even went to church with us on Sundays, but she was different.
She actually practiced what Christians preached. She was kind and generous. She didn’t judge people, and she showed me more
love than my parents ever did. She would walk me to the library, and if it was too hot or too cold to be outside, we would
sit in the children’s section, where she’d read me every book I brought her.
On nice days—usually in the fall or spring—she would let me play on the playground while she read on one of the nearby benches.
Her eyes went up to me every time I called out to her to watch me go down the slide or jump from the swing.
She’d applaud her free hand against her thigh, asking me to do it again until I got bored and she could return to her book.
Then, when I was six and started going to school all day, she stopped watching me. I didn’t find out until later it was because
my mom thought she was ungodly. She disagreed with how Grammy practiced her religion and demanded that my father stop talking
with her. Grammy also stopped going to our church.
I didn’t even know she’d died until one day I came home from school in fifth grade and my parents were both home. My mom was
in a black dress and my father in his suit. He was sitting quietly at the kitchen table and didn’t even look up when I walked
in.
When I asked what was wrong, my mother waved a dismissive hand and casually said, “Your father’s mom died last week. The funeral
was today. Go upstairs and get your homework done. I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.”
I went upstairs and cried silently in my room. That was the same year my dad ripped up the story I wrote. It was then that
I started to realize something was wrong with my parents. They weren’t like other people. They were hateful and full of self-righteous
superiority.
The Beaumonts may not be self-righteous, but they’re definitely cut from a different cloth than Gramma Sharon.
As I deal out the cards again, the back door opens and Valencia, Marcus, Easton, and JT emerge with drinks and small plates
of appetizers.
Gramma Sharon talks with them as we trade cards back and forth. This hand lasts a little longer, but once again it’s her who calls out “Gin!” first. While she shuffles the cards, Valencia talks about Easton and how he’s doing in school.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Gramma Sharon says. “He’s very smart, we all know.” She turns to him. “But tell me something exciting. You’re
living in New York City! Tell me about the fun things you’re doing. Your brother survived being kidnapped by a psycho and
living on the streets. Whatcha got, kiddo?”
“Mom, please.” Valencia takes a big sip of her wine.
Easton glares and it startles me for an instant. But then he seems to realize he might be feeling a little resentment from
Gramma Sharon’s words and his face relaxes. He turns back to her with a shrug. “Not all of us can be so lucky.”
I’m about to open my mouth to playfully scold him before I realize that, for a second, I forgot I’m pretending to be someone
else. Like I’m in some bizarro world where I was born to a different family. I’m not Nate, and his family didn’t get lucky.
“It’s not about luck,” Gramma Sharon says, discarding an ace. “It’s about applying yourself. You’re a small fish in a big