Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
I pushed open the door to the Down Home Diner, and the bell above it chimed.
The lunch rush had thinned out. A few tables were still occupied, the hum of conversation low and comfortable. Lettie moved between booths with a coffee pot, and the smell of something with bacon hit me before I'd taken two steps inside.
“Hello, Sugar,” Little Grandma said to me from the hostess stand. She held out her arms for a hug, which I gladly gave her, and kissed her powdery cheek.
“I just came to pick up my to-go order.”
“I changed that, Zoe. You and I are going to eat lunch together.”
I froze. “What?”
She slowly climbed down off the chair where she sat near the stand. “Follow me.” We weaved through the tables until we stopped near a table in front of the windows overlooking Main Street.
Everybody in Jasper Creek knew what it meant when Little Grandma decided to have a meal with you. She didn't do it because she was hungry. She did it because you needed her to, whether you knew it yet or not. The woman had lived more than a century and she had used every year to collect her wisdom.
When Little Grandma sat down to eat with you, she was about to hit you square between the eyes with something true.
Little Grandma’s granddaughter, Lettie appeared before I even had my jacket off, setting down a tall glass of sweet tea without being asked. She knew my order. Everybody in this town knew everybody's order.
"Mom’s cooking up your bacon cheeseburger as we speak,” Lettie said as she placed a mug of hot tea in front of Little Grandma. “I’ll bring your biscuit out then, Little Grandma,” she promised.
“That’ll be good.”
The old woman gave me a warm smile. “Your store has been keeping you very busy. I haven’t seen you in ages. Chloe and Zarek brought in Olivia the other day. She’s a beautiful baby. What you did. Well, there aren’t words to say what a blessing that was.”
I blushed.
Little Grandma reached out and patted my hand. “Don’t downplay this. Not to me. It was a heartache, wrapped in a miracle, and you did it. There will be a special place in heaven for you.”
I swallowed. Luckily, Lettie came with my burger and Little Grandma’s biscuit.
I cut my burger in half, thinking if I ate it that way, it would make things a little more ladylike.
The fries were perfect. Crispy at the edges, sweet all the way through. I ate half my burger and stole three looks at her while I did it. She sipped her tea and nibbled her biscuit. When I put my burger down, she finally spoke again.
"Adam Beckett," she said finally, "is a fine man. A real fine man." She stirred a slow circle in her tea. "And that boy of his. You can tell a great deal about a father by the son he raises. James reflects very well on his daddy."
"He does," I said. "James is wonderful."
She nodded, like I'd confirmed something she already knew. "Adam is smitten with you."
I lunged for my sweet tea.
The glass was cold against my palm. I drank. I took my time about it.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
Little Grandma watched me set the glass down. "What is holding you back from telling him?"
The question landed so gently that for a second I didn't understand it. Then I did, and my whole chest went tight.
"I'm sorry?"
"He's told you how he feels." She said it the way she might say the sky was blue. Matter-of-fact. Not a question. "And you haven't told him back. I want to know why."
I stared at her. "How do you know what he said?"
The corner of her mouth curved up. "I have known men like Adam Beckett my whole life.
My Patrick was one of them. When a man like that falls, he lets you know it.
He doesn't play games. He doesn't wait to see which way the wind blows.
" She set her tea down. "Patrick let me know from the very beginning where he stood.
I always knew exactly where I was with him. "
I thought about the way Adam looked at me sometimes. Steady. Sure. Like he'd already done the math and arrived at an answer he was at peace with.
"Now." She fixed me with those china-blue eyes. "Why are you afraid to tell Adam how you feel?"
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I didn’t have a good answer.
"I don't know," I finally said.
She nodded like she’d expected me to say that.
"Is it that you feel you're unworthy of him?"
It felt like my heart cracked open.
I looked down at the table. At my hands, at the untouched second half of my burger, at the grain in the wood. Anywhere but her face. And then, slowly, I nodded.
"I let Chloe get hurt once," I said. My voice came out quiet. "Years ago. I was brash. Wild. The kind of girl who didn't think before she acted and left a mess behind her for other people to step in."
"I know who you were," she said.
"She got hurt because of me, Little Grandma."
"I know that too."
I finally looked up at her. She hadn't moved. She sat across from me patient and kind. So kind it made my throat hurt.
"Child." She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
Her hand was small and warm and the skin was paper-thin over the bones.
"I know who you are now. The girl who would give the shirt off her back to any person in this town who needed it.
The girl who opened a shop so that the people who made things with their hands could make a living from it.
The girl who carried her sister's baby in her body for eight months and handed her over with nothing but love. "
My eyes burned.
"You have learned from the mistakes you made when you were young. That is not a small thing. Most people never do." She squeezed my hand. "And everyone who loves you sees the woman you've become. Especially Chloe."
"She forgave me a long time ago," I managed.
"She did. And not because you gave her Olivia, though that was a brave and generous thing." Little Grandma's eyes held mine. "She forgave you because you are you. Because you are her sister, and you are worth forgiving, and you have always been worth loving."
The first tear caught me completely off guard. I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek, and another followed it.
Little Grandma handed me a paper napkin from the dispenser without comment, the way a woman does when she has seen crying before and knows there's no shame in it.
I pressed the napkin to the corners of my eyes and breathed through my nose and got myself mostly sorted.
"Okay," I whispered.
"Good." She withdrew her hand and picked up her biscuit like nothing had happened. "Now go put that poor man out of his misery and tell him you love him too."
I let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob.
"Yes ma'am," I said.
She bit into her biscuit with considerable satisfaction.