CHAPTER FOURTEEN GABRIELLE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
G AbrIELLE
C an you not put everything you see into the cart, please?” I ask my two children.
“But, Mom,” Carter says, making my name into a sentence. “I need these.”
I snatch the box out of his hand. “You do not need liquefied sugar with red food coloring and a sour sprinkle.” I put it back on the shelf. “There are so many reasons why that’s not happening.”
The grocery store in Logan is comfortably busy. There are enough people inside to keep the doors open, but there aren’t so many people that I want to start ramming carts with my own. Most people shop at the big-box store across town. I prefer the mom-and-pop establishment that has homemade soaps and trail mix.
“How was school?” I ask Dylan. He hasn’t really spoken to me since I picked him up an hour ago. Most of his communication has been via grunts and head nods. It’s so fun for me. “Did you have a good day?”
He grunts.
“How about this,” I say, picking up a box of instant oatmeal. “One grunt for yes and two for no.”
He glares at me.
“Or use English,” I say. “It’s up to you.”
“Sometimes I really don’t like you,” he says.
“Yeah, well, at least you said it in English.”
He rolls his eyes and refuses to look at me.
Carter grabs my arm and rests his head against my bicep. “I had a good day, Mom. I made a free throw during gym class. Everybody clapped.”
“That’s great, Carter.”
“And I made the prettiest flower during art. I know Mrs. Templesman thought so. I could see it on her face.” He tugs on me until I look down at him. “You know that face you make when you tell someone their baby is cute, but you really don’t mean it?”
I struggle not to laugh.
“The teacher made that face when she looked at everyone’s flower but mine.” He beams. “I’ll bring it home to you once she takes it off the wall in the hallway.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Can I get some beef jerky?” Dylan asks, holding up a box.
“Sure.”
He drops it into the cart unceremoniously.
The week has been a bust. The rain kept me from doing any of my outside projects, and my frustration with Jay Stetson kept me from doing many on the inside. Every time I grabbed a hammer, I had to hold myself back from throwing it across the yard and into his window while screaming, “Get your shit together, asshole.” By Wednesday, I was more frustrated than angry. And yesterday I was more perplexed than frustrated. It’s a journey, I’ve learned, when dealing with my neighbor.
He’s handsome. He’s fun, when he lets his guard down. He’s surprisingly good with the boys.
He has a voice that makes me wobble and a touch that melts me.
And that’s why I won’t deal with him again.
I stop the cart and pull a bag of popcorn off a shelf. “This might be fun for Cricket’s tonight. It’s the parmesan kind.”
“Can I please stay home alone?” Dylan asks.
“No.”
“Mom.” His nostrils flare. “I’m fourteen. I’m not a little kid.”
“I know, Dylan. And I know I have to let loose of you a little bit. But we just got to town and—”
“And you refuse to let me stay home with Cricket living down the street. You realize you’re making me go to a babysitter with my seven-year-old brother, right?”
I sigh. “Kyle will be there.”
“He lives there, Mother.”
I ignore the stare of an older woman as she passes and stay focused on my child.
“Can we not do this here?” I ask.
“Sure. Let’s not ever do it. That’s what you want, anyway.”
I turn my back to Carter and glare at my oldest son. As I’m about to speak, Scottie’s words come back to me.
“I remember thinking that if she could smile again, so could I. We didn’t realize it then, but she helped us heal by healing herself.”
“The reason you can’t stay home tonight is because I’ll worry about you,” I say calmly. “I don’t feel comfortable yet, being out of town while you’re alone after dark. But,” I say before he can cut me off, “I will start giving you a bit more freedom if you keep going to school and being good with Carter and being nice to me. It’s about respect, Dylan. Trust is earned. Show me some respect and I can trust you with a little more.”
He sobers a little. “Or you could just stay home.”
Is that what this is about? Is he pushing me away because he wants me home? Or is he just upset to see me make plans for the first time since Christopher’s passing?
“Look, I need to do this, Dylan. This is hard for me too. But it’s time we stop being scared and sad and move on with our lives. We don’t have to do it all at once, but we need to take steps in that direction.”
“Do you think that’s what Dad would’ve wanted?”
My sweet boy. I grab his hand. “I know it’s what Dad would’ve wanted.”
He pulls his hand back and looks away. I sniffle as he joins Carter at the front of the cart.
“Is that you, Gabrielle?” An older man in a golfer’s hat stops beside me. “By golly, it is you. How are you, sweetheart?”
It’s the way he says sweetheart that clues me in. I laugh. “Billy Madrid, how are you?”
“Still kicking,” he says, pulling me into a quick hug. “I heard you were back in town. The Alden Social Club was talking about it last night.”
“About what, exactly?”
I hold my breath while he explains, hoping there’s no mention of a towel.
“Just that Juanita Miller saw you dropping your kids off at school the other day,” he says. “We were going to send you a card and invite you to a meeting. But since I’m here, I’ll just invite you personally.”
“The old Alden Social Club. What are you all up to nowadays?”
“We’re still doing charity work, of course.” He shakes his head. “Your mother was the best fundraiser I ever knew. She could convince anyone to donate to anything.”
My heart swells at the mention of her.
“Hey, Mom,” Carter says with Dylan on his heels.
I wait for them to reach us, giving them a look to remember their manners.
“Kids, I’d like you to meet Billy Madrid,” I say. “He was the high school principal when I was in school, and he was in a club with your grandma.”
“Your grandma was an amazing lady,” Billy says, shaking both their hands. “And this mama of yours is pretty special.”
“We love her,” Carter says, smiling up at me.
“I bet you do,” Billy says. “I tell you what, Gabby, finish your shopping. The club meets every Friday at Betty Lou’s for fish and Tuesdays for our weekly meeting at the community building at the park. We’d love for you to come by.”
“I’ll try.”
He grins. “It was nice meeting you, boys.”
“You too,” Dylan says, watching him walk away.
Carter wastes no time in bringing me back to the activity at hand. “So hear us out. We get one cereal that’s healthy and one cereal full of sugar. Then we go one bowl healthy stuff, one bowl good stuff.”
“Fine,” I say, giving in entirely too easily. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the shopping excursion. “Hey, guys. I forgot to get orange juice. Will you run back and get a jug of it, please?”
“Pulp or no pulp?” Dylan asks.
“Some pulp but not to where it’s chunky.”
They take off to the back of the store with Dylan lecturing Carter on not interrupting people, something I find ironic.
I pause next to the discounted spice bin to check my email. But as I bring it up, a text comes through.
Della: Are you ready for tonight?
Me: I can’t wait.
Della: I’ll pick you up around eight?
Me: I’m usually in bed at eight. Ha! If I fall asleep, prop me up and put a drink in my hand.
Della:
“Whoa,” I say as the cart rattles. An armful of items is deposited with our other items. “That was more than orange juice.”
“But it was healthy,” Carter says. “String cheese. Yogurt with strawberries.”
“Bagels,” Dylan says, wincing. “But the cream cheese was dairy. Ish. ”
I sigh and push on. “You guys have absolutely no idea how much food costs these days. If you keep eating like this, I’m going to have to get an actual job.” I laugh at myself. “Come on, guys. That was funny.”
“Total Mom joke,” Carter says, making Dylan laugh.
“You laugh at a seven-year-old but not me? Cool.”
Carter sprints ahead of us and comes back with a box of doughnuts.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “We have bagels and cream cheese, thanks to Dylan. We don’t need this much food. It’ll go to waste.” I think. With the way they’ve been eating, maybe not.
“These aren’t for us,” Carter says.
Dylan looks at me, his brows pulled together.
“Then who are they for?” I ask.
“Jay.”
I slow my walk. Did he say Jay? Surely not. “Excuse me?”
“These are for Jay,” he says again.
It takes me a moment to get my bearings.
“Why would we get doughnuts for Jay?” I ask, confused.
“Are we talking about our neighbor?” Dylan asks.
I shrug. “I think so.”
“Yes, silly. Our neighbor, Jay. How many other Jays do you know?” Carter asks.
I scratch my forehead. “So why are we getting Jay doughnuts?”
“Because,” Carter says, as if we’re too slow and need to catch up, “he’s been sad. So we need to get him a treat. Because that’s being nice, and we should be nice to our neighbors. That’s what you always say. Treat your neighbors like you want to be treated. If I was sad, I’d want doughnuts.”
That was before our neighbor was an infuriating, confusing, gorgeous man that I’d like to forget exists at this point.
Dylan looks at me. “Ball is in your court.”
I start to speak but stop. I have so many questions that I don’t know where to start.
“We haven’t seen Jay since last weekend,” Dylan says. “How do you know he’s sad?”
Well, I saw him Monday in the basement, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Maybe you haven’t seen him, but I have,” Carter says, bouncing from one foot to the other. “I saw him yesterday.”
“Where?” I ask.
“I went to his house. My ball needed air again, and I was gonna ask to use his pumper. But he was all cranky again, so I didn’t ask.”
I force a swallow. “Didn’t I ask you to leave him alone?”
“Yes, you did. But he’s my friend. And he’s having adult problems and is sad. So I have to see him. That’s what you do. You taught me that.”
I never thought I would regret teaching my child manners. But here we are.
“Why do you think he’s having adult problems?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can manage while my brain is working overtime.
“He told me.” He shrugs, placing the doughnuts carefully into the cart. “I gave him your tricks and told him to try them.”
My eyes bulge. “What did you tell him?”
“That you drink wine. Or you paint a room a bunch of times. Or ... you cry.”
I briefly close my eyes and try not to die on the spot.
Dylan makes a face. “Carter, why don’t we go see if there are any watermelons?”
“Okay!”
I give Dylan a smile as they scamper off to the produce aisle.
“Let this go,” I whisper. “It doesn’t matter what Carter told Jay. Jay’s nothing to you. And he wants it that way. So who cares?”
I glance down at my phone and see another text of a devil emoji from Della.
“Go have fun tonight and keep going forward,” I say softly. “Fuck Jay.”
Just not literally.