Chapter 22 – Grant
TWENTY-TWO
GRANT
His sister was someone he could never successfully lie to.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” my mother announced.
It was later that night, and my family was as settled in as they could be in this house.
There were times I could admire the architectural achievement of the blend of colonial Spanish with modern sprawl, but sometimes it was hard to find a room where we could relax.
The official living room had high arched ceilings, cut in sunroofs in the terracotta roof, and floor to ceiling windows that arched around a courtyard with a very large fountain in the middle of it.
I’d never cared for that fountain.
So we’d gathered in the library. It had the most comfortable furniture and an air of intimacy that a family reunion required.
I was sipping on some ridiculously expensive scotch when my mother crossed the room to kiss me on the top of my head.
“Seriously, Mom?”
“Don’t be so fussy,” she told me. “You love it when I fawn over you.”
“All right,” my father said, groaning as he stood up from where he’d been sitting in one of the chairs. “I’ll come too.”
“You don’t have to,” my mother said. “But I need to be up by the crack of dawn if I’m going to have everything ready tomorrow. Anna had everything delivered just as I asked, but I’m still going to want to go over all the ingredients one more time in the morning.”
“That’s your OCD,” I reminded her.
“How else do you think dinner goes off without a hitch?” she chided me.
“Mom,” Rebecca said, stretched out on the other side of the leather couch, her sock covered feet precariously close to touching me, which I assumed she did on purpose to annoy me. “I said I would help. Can we set the rules, now that you’ll let me?”
My mother smiled. “Of course not. I’ll gladly accept your help.”
Rebecca turned to me. “She’s not going to let me help. She never lets me help. She always says I can help, but then she pushes me out of the way and does everything herself.”
“She’s not going to let you help,” I confirmed.
“I am so!” my mother protested. “As long as you agree to do it exactly my way.”
“And there it is, the catch,” Rebecca said, and took another sip of her wine. Out of the fancy wine glass I’d never had the chance to use.
I smiled with mild amusement and wasn’t unaware that I’d been doing that most of the night. My family was utterly frustrating, but I’d forgotten how much I liked them. It occurred to me I really had no reason for not going to Florida to spend time with them over the holiday.
It just always felt easier to stay away. Less…emotional.
“Come on, Jackie,” Dad grumbled, herding my mother out of the room. “Let’s get you to bed and you can think of all the things you’ll let Rebecca do to help.”
“And don’t forget Flowers. She’ll want to help, too,” I said. “She’s not someone who can sit still if things are happening around her.”
Suddenly, there was this weird silence, and when I glanced up, everyone was watching me.
“What?”
“Nothing,” my mother said quickly. Too quickly. “I’ll make sure to set aside some tasks for her too. Goodnight, children. Let me be a total mom and say it makes me happy seeing you two together like that.”
“Night,” my father announced. “Let’s plan on a run together tomorrow morning, son.”
My father was a runner. Always had been. His motto was, don’t stop until you drop. At least it would help me work up an appetite for dinner. If the amount of groceries my mother had stocked in my kitchen was any indication, we would be having nothing less than a Thanksgiving feast.
“Yep.”
“Do we know where we’re going?” Mom asked, as they stood at the edge of the doorway.
“Right down the long hallway. Your guest room is the last one on the left.”
“This house needs either a tram or golf carts to navigate,” my father noted. “Come on, Jackie, if we leave now, we might make it to our guest room by midnight.”
They were so dramatic.
The house was big, but it wasn’t that big. Was it?
Once they left, Rebecca got off the couch, took my empty glass, and headed for the wet bar in the corner of the room.
“We’re having another drink,” she announced.
“If you say so,” I muttered.
I knew what was coming. I thought I was prepared for it too. A minute later, she returned and folded her sock covered feet underneath her on the other side of the couch.
Another glass of wine for her. Red. And more expensive scotch for me.
“This place is ridiculous,” she said, handing me my crystal glass.
“I know. Do you think I should sell it?”
“Would you?” she asked, genuinely surprised
“It feels a little silly for just one person. I mean, there is a whole room out there for entertaining and lounging and here we are. In the library.”
“It’s because none of the furniture in that room is comfortable.”
“My interior decorator thought comfort was overrated,” I told her.
“And our voices echo when we talk out there. Because of the high ceilings.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” I said. Probably because I didn’t spend a lot of time talking to myself. “Much.”
“What did Anna think the first time she saw it?” Rebecca asked me, adjusting herself until she sat cross-legged on the couch facing me. She took another sip of her wine. Liquid courage, I imagined.
“And here we go,” I sighed.
“What?” she blinked innocently.
“Let’s just get on with it,” I told her. “All the things you want to ask me.”
“So many things, Grant. How are you doing? How are you feeling? How are you living? Because it does feel in some ways that you are living. Again.”
“I didn’t want to,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think I was supposed to. But I can’t ignore that changes are happening in my life. Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes. Are those changes happening because of Anna?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I coughed. “Anna is just someone who works for me.”
See how reasonable that sounded? I’d been waiting for the question in some form or other all night, so I was completely prepared with my answer.
There was a point in my life where I’d run a company of over a thousand employees and my family would not have once thought I’d formed a personal relationship with a single one of them.
I was a solitary person who preferred my own company, and the only person who had ever penetrated the distance I kept from the rest of the world had been Allison.
However, one young plain assistant, and I knew they thought I’d lost what was left of my mind over her.
Had I lost my mind over Flowers? Maybe.
“Oh.”
“Oh,” I repeated. “Why, did you think she was something else?”
Rebecca scowled at me. I knew that scowl all too well.
“Evan Grant Allen Jr., do not attempt to fool me. I’ve been your sister my whole life. You talked about another person, a woman, with me on the phone. There was something in your voice, whether you would acknowledge that or not. That has happened only twice in your life.”
“Don’t make too much of it, Becks,” I said, using my sister’s nickname. It felt a bit strange brushing it off. Like another crack around the dried mud, I’d felt encased in for the past four years. A sarcophagus breaking open, except I had no idea what newly formed monster lay inside it.
“I’m not making too much of it. I’m making just enough. You’re different around her. Protective.”
I shrugged, as if owning that. “You see how young she is. This is her first real job.”
“She is young,” Becks admitted. “But, in this crazy way, she doesn’t feel young. Almost like she’s lived twice the amount I have in fewer years. Does that make sense?”
It made perfect sense, but I wasn’t going to explain why. Flowers was already nervous about her secret, although it was stupid to call it that. She didn’t want them to know about her past, so I wouldn’t share it.
Except, I wanted to. If only, so they could perhaps understand my reaction to her better.
I was simply being protective of someone who had to navigate this world alone. There was nothing more to it than that.
“Look, she works for me. She does her job well. That is all there is between us. If that’s why you all made the decision to come to Houston-”
“We made the decision to come to Houston because you wouldn’t come to us, and we wanted to see you,” Becks cut me off. “You don’t let us see you enough. Not since Allison died. You know we didn’t die with her. We’re right here, whenever you need us or want us.”
Her words weren’t sharp, but they still stung.
She wasn’t wrong. I had purposefully kept my family at bay. They made me feel things when I didn’t want to feel. When I only wanted to be numb. It was easier to stay numb when they were all in Florida. Easier to suffer through the holidays alone.
I wasn’t numb anymore. This past September had been the four-year anniversary of Allison’s death. The death I caused. Four years of anger, sorrow and regret. So much, that I had to ball it all up and bury it away with my dead wife.
Numb, dead, zombielike. It had been the only way to live.
Now I was beginning to see there was a different way.
Had I suffered enough penance? I couldn’t have. Not nearly enough for Allison.
Only I didn’t know how to stop it. Feeling these things.
“I like her,” Rebecca said, and took another sip of her wine. “I know that. She was clearly put on the spot at lunch, but she buckled down and handled herself like a champ. Even in the face of one of Mom’s guilt trips.”
“She is a likeable person. I suppose.”
“Don’t be like that. Of course you like her. I know this because she obviously doesn’t put up with your bullshit. She’s pretty in a way you don’t notice at first, until you do. And she’s got this…quality. It’s hard to put a finger on it.”
“Innocence,” I supplied.
“Yeah,” Rebecca nodded. “That’s it. Like she’s seeing everything for the first time. Today, when she saw her fries came with a dipping sauce, not ketchup, it was like this amazing surprise.”
Yes. It made it impossible not to always want to watch her. Waiting to see how she would react.
Once, I’d watched her delicately spit out a piece of food into a napkin during a business lunch when she realized there were orange chunks in a Chinese Mandarin salad.
The face she’d made. As if the salad had betrayed her.
However, I couldn’t spend too much time thinking about that, because that led to other thoughts.
Like how she might react if I went down on her. Kissed her pussy. Fucked her with my tongue.
I squeezed my eyes closed in an attempt to banish the thought.
Because the other thing that was coming back to life along with everything else was my dick.
Not Flowers. Please dick. Anyone but her.
“Do you think she’ll come tomorrow, or make an excuse to bail?”
My mind was wandering to a list of other women I might call for a casual hook up to relieve some of this built-up sexual energy, so I had to replay Beck’s question.
Was Flowers going to come tomorrow?
Yes. Because she was the bravest fucking person I knew. Still, I kept it lighter than that. “She’ll come. I told her there is going to be pie.”
Rebecca finished off the last of her wine and stood up. “Well, I better go and get some sleep so I can not help Mom tomorrow. Night, Grant. I’m glad we came.”
“I’m glad you came too,” I said honestly. I was so very glad.
In fact, I was pretty sure I was actually content to have my family sleeping under my roof tonight. Tomorrow, there would be only more of that. Banter, teasing, laughter. Especially when Flowers showed up.
I’m sorry, Allison. I’m so sorry. I never meant to be happy again.
I just didn’t know how to stop it.
Or maybe I did.
Tomorrow I would showcase to everyone that Flowers was nothing more than an assistant.
I’d make a point.
Keep things…hell, I didn’t know. But one thing would be clear to everyone, including Flowers, they would know she meant nothing to me beyond a professional working relationship.