Chapter 10
“Happy New Year,” Regina repeated. “Another one gone.” She clinked her glass to ours but she sighed deeply, and it just didn’t feel very festive even though this was the office holiday lunch.
Pinar noticed that, too. “Shit, Regina! Why do you sound like you’re going to cry?” She put her arm around her friend on their side of the booth, and Regina picked up her napkin and dabbed her eyes.
“It’s because of what happened on Christmas,” she said. “I found out that my daughter is accepting a job offer in Dallas.”
“Good for her,” Theo said, smiling, and we all looked at him until he frowned. “Is that bad? It’s hard to find a job,” he reminded us, and Regina nodded.
“I know and I’m glad that she got it. But I’m going to miss her a lot.” She dabbed her eyes again.
“Well, I have some news that might make you happier,” Pinar said. She was doing something under the table, and then she held up her left hand. “Surprise! Denton asked me on New Year’s Eve and I said yes!”
Regina made a funny squeal/scream and grabbed her fingers to see the ring, and Theo said he was very happy for her.
“That’s what you wanted,” I confirmed, and when she said yes to me as well, I reached across the booth and squeezed her other hand.
She told us all about the proposal and how surprised she’d been, how her whole family had been in on it and had been bursting to tell her but had managed to stay quiet.
Her son already loved Denton and she was so excited to have a wedding, which she said we were all invited to. Pinar’s time off had been awesome.
“How about you guys?” she asked, looking across the booth at me and Theo.
“We’re absolutely not engaged,” I answered. “Nowhere close.”
There was dead silence at our table. “I meant, did you also have a good time over the holidays?” she asked, saying the words more slowly.
“Oh. I did,” I answered, and looked over at him. “Did you? I thought so.”
“I really did,” he agreed. “It was fun.” Then he smiled at me and I smiled back, very happy to hear that.
We hadn’t done anything but sleep on New Year’s Eve but Christmas had been a busy and tiring day.
I’d enjoyed it a lot, too. JuJu’s house was big enough for all of us and there had been so, so many people, but everyone had refrained from arguing. Mostly.
Theo was telling them about the gift exchange and how it had gotten a little chaotic, which was a great way to describe things.
Nicola had done her best to corral everyone but with so many people, including so many kids and my mom who didn’t want to listen, it had gotten to be a lot.
“Campbell, Grace’s brother-in-law, gave me the coolest shirt I’ve ever had in my life. That guy has style,” he told them.
“And Juliet loved what you gave her,” I said.
“It was just a kids’ book.”
“No, it was a special hardcover edition of your favorite book that you used to get from the library to read with your sister, and you wrote your phone number inside the cover so that she could call you anytime, day or night, with questions about the baby,” I said, like maybe he’d forgotten.
But Regina and Pinar didn’t know about it.
“My sister has been really worried about her pregnancy but that made her feel much better,” I explained to them. “It was the perfect gift.”
“I think she’s doing better anyway,” he said, and it was true that she was a lot calmer and more like the Juliet that I’d known for my whole life, before the nightmare of her husband’s illness had become her focus.
“I think they’ll be great parents. All of your siblings do well with their kids, which is—” He stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“No, I was going to say something, but I realize that it sounds rude.”
“Go for it,” Pinar encouraged, and I also said that he should spit it out. I then clarified that I meant the rude comment, not any of the delicious chicken shawarma that he’d been eating.
“Ok.” He still hesitated for a moment but then said, “It’s great that your siblings do so well with their own kids, when it sounds like they didn’t have wonderful role models for parenting.” That wasn’t rude, just truthful.
“What’s with your parents?” Pinar asked me.
“My dad was mostly at his office or working at home, and my mom didn’t want to mother very much,” I said. “That’s a hard situation when you have seven children, because if someone doesn’t have eyes on them, things can go bad pretty fast.”
“Then who watched you?” Regina asked. She’d seemed upset by that description of my parents.
“My grandma took care of the older kids, but my big sister mostly watched me. I really was fine,” I assured her.
“That’s a load of—” Theo stopped himself again. “Sorry.”
“Please go ahead,” I invited, and Pinar chimed in that he should feel free to express himself.
“You’ve told me things that weren’t fine at all,” he said, but he didn’t mention my former neighbor and what had happened before I’d been able to fight back.
I was glad because I didn’t need to think about that.
The nightmares I had about it, the ones that made me kick so darn hard, were enough of a reminder.
“You said you walked all over Detroit by yourself, not just when you went looking for the box of leaves,” he continued. “You were on your own too often. You went to school alone, went to see friends, tried to find your mom and your sisters, and attempted to sneak into Canada.”
“Canada? A box of leaves?” Pinar asked.
“I was interested in foreign travel,” I explained.
The box of leaves had come up at Christmas, too, when I had handed Brenna the present I’d wrapped for her.
She had opened her mouth but before any words emerged about previous gifts, Theo had started talking.
He’d told everyone the story of how I’d gone foraging for laurel leaves when I’d been eight to make a special present for Juliet, and he had said that it was a really nice thing and not a joke.
But he’d explained it all so pleasantly, in his nice, calm voice.
No one got offended or mad, not even my mom when he made it clear that he also thought that someone should have stopped me from crossing through several neighborhoods and then accepting a ride from a kind stranger to get home.
“Grace!” Nicola had gasped. “You hitchhiked when you were that little?”
“No, I didn’t put my thumb out because you’d told me not to do that.
A lady stopped to pick me up because she was worried to see me alone on West Grand Boulevard at that time of night,” I’d explained.
I had expected them to ask why I would have chosen to do something so dumb.
Instead, Nicola had started telling other stories.
That was what Theo touched on now. “You got lost so many times,” he said. “Nicola told us that you were on a first-name basis with the officers at the local precinct because they picked you up so often.”
“I didn’t have a great sense of direction back then, but I’m much better now,” I said. “I hardly ever get lost, even when I can’t find my phone. Except I do find that road signage isn’t very helpful.” All those little letters were hard to read.
“You didn’t get lost because you have a poor sense of direction. You were young and no one was taking care you,” he corrected me. “It sounds to me like you were mostly on your own. You said that you went over to another family’s house to eat until your mom found out and got mad.”
“The Lassiters were so nice,” I remembered. But yes, my mom had been upset because she and Mrs. Lassiter had been friends and she’d thought that I had embarrassed her on purpose when I’d asked them for food.
Luckily, no one had brought that up at Christmas. After telling Theo and everyone else about my early involvement with the police, Nicola had been ready to recount even more stories about how dumb I’d been—but then Brenna had opened her present.
She had loved the necklace and had been stunned that it came from me, and Dion hadn’t said one word about how he’d helped to pick it out.
He had gotten a big grin which he’d hidden by drinking some of JuJu and Beckett’s delicious champagne, and then by kissing his girlfriend.
He’d held up plastic mistletoe, which he’d been carrying so that he could kiss her a lot.
“So your parents neglected you,” Pinar said now, nodding. “Yeah, that happens way too much.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I told her. “I mean yes, you’re right that it could happen.” It had happened to Theo, in fact, because he’d said that his parents had been too busy to take care of him and his sister. “It’s unfortunate that it happens to some kids, but not me. I had Nicola.”
“She was also a little girl, and then she moved out,” Theo said, but then shook his head. “We don’t need to argue about it. I agree that you were very lucky to have a sister who loves you so much.”
I agreed too, and I also knew that it hadn’t been fair to her to get stuck with me, the problem child. “She’s doing very well now in spite of everything,” I assured them.
“I wish I’d had a sister like that,” Pinar said. She played with her new engagement ring and the stone sent sparkling rays across the baba ghanouj. “My mom used to go on benders and I was on my own getting into trouble.”
Theo looked across the table and nodded. “I’m glad you found a way out of it,” he said quietly.
“Me too. And I’m glad nothing too bad ever happened. I had nice neighbors and they stepped in when my mother wasn’t around and when CPS didn’t show an immediate interest. Then my aunt took me in and things got a hell of a lot better.”
“That’s lucky. I was very lucky, too,” I said. “Anyway, we’re all here now, and it’s a new year.” I held up my glass and we clinked again. It was just water and lemonade, since they were going back to work at the office and I had things to do, too. “What’s happening with the ophthalmologists?”