Chapter 46
forty-six
Georgia
Please don’t let this be as awkward as the party, I beg the universe as I approach the old gray farmhouse and climb the wooden stairs.
The boards of the wide wraparound porch sag with age, but the entire thing looks freshly painted, right down to the white trim and the sage-green rocking chairs that line the house. I press the doorbell and wait.
When I called Harmony back a few days ago, she gave away little more than her text message did. All I know is this house belongs to my Great-Aunt Maggie and that it was she who insisted on my being invited here today.
The lock clicks and the door opens to a slightly smiling Harmony dressed in white jeans and a chambray button-down, her blond hair brushed into a half-up style.
“Georgia, you made it.” She smooths down her shirt, and I can tell she’s trying to deepen her smile into something welcoming, but her face isn’t cooperating. Perhaps she’s as uncertain about this visit as I am. “Come on in.”
“Thanks.” We exchange a stiff hug before I move past her and the door closes behind me.
“I really appreciate you making the trip out here. Mom’s been on my case about meeting you. Now, just to warn you, she doesn’t hear great out of her left ear, so don’t be afraid to yell.”
I nod, my nerves only multiplying as I follow her along the creaky floorboards of the old house, picturing the crotchety, hard-of-hearing old woman I’m about to face for reasons I can’t begin to fathom.
I expect to find someone small and feeble set upon a velvet chair like some aging queen I’ve been summoned to answer to.
But what I find in the kitchen is a reedlike woman in a pink gingham housedress, already smiling big.
“Georgia,” she beams, her eyes round and wide like we’re old friends and she’s missed me. She moves slowly but steadily across the linoleum floor and takes my hands in hers. “I’d recognize you anywhere.”
“Oh.” I titter. Do I still look the same after all these years? “Well, it’s nice to see you. Thank you for inviting me to your home.”
She gives a playful glance around the room. “Do you recognize it?”
“Mom, she was a baby,” Harmony interjects.
“You never know how the mind works,” Maggie states, flicking her hand through the air. “Anyway, come and sit, dear, and let me have a look at you.”
She pulls out a cushioned chair for me at the round cloth-covered kitchen table before settling into her own while Harmony places three glasses and a pitcher of pink lemonade in the center.
I endure a short round of questions about my studies, my upcoming move, and how I’ve liked living in Shafer, but I can tell Maggie doesn’t enjoy small talk any more than I do.
So when she drains her glass of lemonade and swivels to face me, I’m more than ready to learn why she summoned me here.
“I have to apologize for not showing my face at your party a few weeks ago.”
“Mom’s health,” Harmony offers.
Maggie nods. “And I didn’t want to face it all again.” The admission hangs boldly in the air before she continues. “So many memories, good and bad. I didn’t know if I had the energy for them.”
I try to look understanding, drawing my brows together and nodding. “I’m sure.”
“But Harmony told me things were strained. Said you looked right sad by the time it was all over.”
I swallow, embarrassed at having been so transparent.
I wish Maggie would continue, but her silence tells me it’s my turn to speak.
“Sometimes I have these ideas that aren’t…
realistic. See, I had a few hazy memories of visits to Julie’s house, and then I came across her photo albums with all the reunion pictures, and I thought I could re-create those times somehow.
I don’t know what I was trying to achieve. ”
“Enjoying the company of your family is hardly what I’d call unrealistic.” Maggie gives a sly smile. “Although we McKennas don’t always make it easy, do we, Harmony?”
The expression that passes over Harmony’s face is unreadable. “One of the things I told Mom,” she says to me, “is that I didn’t think anyone ever explained to you what happened to our family when you were a kid. I assumed you knew as much as I did, but then at the party…”
In the silence that follows, the foolish feeling from that day takes hold of me again. “It was clear I know nothing about our family,” I supply.
“Right.” Harmony looks apologetic. “And I want to say I’m sorry things were strained. For you to walk into that situation not knowing about the bad blood wasn’t fair.”
Maggie pats her daughter’s hand. “Now, let’s not act as though we’re at a funeral.
Let’s let Georgia hear the story and decide for herself how to feel about it.
” Maggie has an air of quiet confidence when she peers at me, which soothes the ball of dread in my stomach.
“It’s your story more than anyone’s, after all.
As you know, Julie and your grandmother were my sisters.
We grew up in the house that belongs to you now, and when our mother passed away many years ago, she left the house to Julie, as she was the only one unmarried and still living at home.
The three of us were close growing up, and we remained good friends as we went our separate ways, but of course things changed.
Ginny was always the boldest of us, so it was no surprise when she moved halfway across the country to marry your grandfather and start a family.
But we still got together for our reunions and holidays.
” She smiles. “Well, you’ve seen the snapshots. ”
I dip my chin, pleased to learn the details of my family history, basic as they are, but eager for her to go on. It takes all my concentration not to let my brain spin out with possibilities of the dark secret she’s about to reveal.
“Your father was the light of Ginny’s life.
We all adore our children.” Here she pauses to give her daughter a private grin.
“But Ginny simply came alive when she became a mother. I don’t know if it was that she never managed to have another child or that your father was the spitting image of your grandfather, whom she simply adored, but whatever it was, Ginny’s life was Daniel.
And when you came along, well, her joy only multiplied.
I’d never seen her more excited than when she found out she was a grandmother to a little girl. ”
I smile despite my tightening throat. I suppose I remember that feeling of being adored by my grandmother sometime long ago, but the overlaying memories after she became my guardian contrast so sharply. There was love there, sure, but such distance and so much quiet.
Maggie, studying me, must sense it. “Now,” she says softly, and I know which point in the story we’ve reached.
“When your parents had their terrible accident—” An awkward second passes while she crosses herself as I sit there watching—awkward for me, anyway, as Maggie seems unbothered by my stillness.
My grandmother always disapproved of the fact my parents raised me without religion, though she respected their wishes even after I went to live with her.
“I’m sorry to say that everything changed.
But who am I to tell you that?” She shakes her head.
“Ginny was in a terrible state. Terrible. Catatonic. And, I suppose, exactly what you’d expect from a mother who lives and breathes for her only child.
It made no difference that he was an adult, she was bereft.
And Julie and I concluded she was in no state to care for a little girl grieving her parents. Simply not right.”
To my surprise, she makes a fist and thumps the table to emphasize her words.
“She was too deep in her own grief to give you what you needed. We wanted to help, to move you back here where you had roots, to let Ginny be your caretaker but to let us care for you too. Only she wouldn’t hear it.
Too proud, too certain of herself, too devoted to being a mother and grandmother.
She simply couldn’t entertain the idea that she wasn’t up to the job.
We argued—oh, did we ever argue.” She turns to her daughter for confirmation.
“It got ugly,” Harmony says. “And then there was the money thing.”
I look between Harmony, now picking at her nails, and Maggie, who’s shaking her head and staring off at the corner. The money thing?
“I’d assumed Ginny told you at some point,” Maggie says. “But again, after the party, Harmony felt sure it was yet another thing your grandmother failed to mention.”
“It shouldn’t have snowballed the way it did.” Harmony blinks down at her hands. “That’s partly my fault.”
“Plenty of blame to go around, but let’s not keep poor Georgia in suspense, dear.”
Harmony meets my eye. “A few months before the accident, your parents borrowed a little money from me and my husband. Not a huge amount, and we had a payment plan worked out. After they passed, I thought Ginny would be willing to make the payments. She wasn’t.”
“When you say not a huge amount…” I say, dread rising.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.
It was only that my husband’s business suddenly wasn’t doing so well, and Aunt Ginny initially agreed, but she kept putting off the repayment, and things were already getting bad between her and my mom.
So when she cut off contact, I got angry. ”
“Sounds fair. Grandma wasn’t exactly poor.”
“I overreacted, though—got emotional, told other people in the family, and soon everyone was taking sides. There was enough anger as it was about Ginny keeping you from us, so the money was another reason for everyone to pile on her. It wasn’t right. Legally, she didn’t owe us anything.”