37. Emory
EMORY
Granny puts on lipstick for her cast removal. Not the emergency tube she keeps in her purse beside mints, cash and opinions.
Lipstick.
Red.
The expensive one, which means in her mind this is an occasion.
“You are not wearing wedges to the orthopedist.”
Granny looks down at her shoe, then back at me over the top of her glasses. “This is not a wedge. This is a sensible summer support shoe.”
“That is absolutely a wedge and too dangerous on one leg.”
She points at me with the lipstick tube. “You have gotten very mouthy since moving back in.”
I lean against the doorway and fold my arms while she blots her lipstick in the compact mirror. “You’ve gotten very dramatic since breaking your leg.”
“Excuse you. I’ve always been dramatic. The leg simply gave me an audience.” She says it with the confidence of a woman who fully believes her cast was less a medical inconvenience and more a publicity opportunity.
Frank looks up from boxing doughnuts. “That’s true.”
Granny cuts her eyes to him. “Frank, don’t you have boxes to stuff… and a mouth?”
“I’m multitasking.”
The door opens, and Miss Hattie breezes in wearing a lemon yellow blouse, white capris, and the expression of a woman arriving for brunch and gossip rather than a medical appointment.
“Well,” she says, stopping short when she sees Granny. “Look at you.”
“I know,” Granny says modestly. “Recovery agrees with me.”
“We need to go,” I say before the two of them derail the entire morning.
Frank lifts a hand. “I’ll hold down the fort.”
Mr. Humphrey gives one of his usual hmphs behind the newspaper, folded as always to the obituaries, like he’s checking on the competition.
Granny pauses on her way out and points at him. “If you’re going to die while I’m gone, wait until after lunch.”
Mr. Humphrey lowers the paper just enough to glare at her.
Miss Hattie pats his shoulder as she passes. “Don’t pay her any mind, Humph. She’s feeling spry and therefore intolerable.”
“I heard that,” Granny calls.
“You were meant to.”
I shake my head and grab Granny’s purse.
As I pull out of the shell lot onto Bay Street, before we’ve even passed the little white church, a thought slips in quietly. I knew this was temporary. It’s been my motto.
But I never asked myself what it would look like when she stopped needing me.
The drive into Summerlin is full of commentary, gossip, and deeply conflicting medical opinions from two women who think WebMD is a government conspiracy but trust whatever Jodi Lorenzen heard from her hairdresser.
And the Mayor Wilkinson scandal has escalated and now comes with details.
I grip the steering wheel tighter because if I laugh too hard, I’m going to miss the turn.
Granny starts listing everything she plans to do the second the cast comes off.
“Drive.”
“No.”
“Reorganize the back pantry.”
“You can barely reach the top shelf on a good day.”
“That’s why God made step stools, Emory.”
“No.”
“Go dancing.”
Miss Hattie, riding shotgun, twists around so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t throw out a shoulder. “With me?”
“Obviously with you. Emory has no rhythm.”
“I have rhythm.”
“You count in your head.”
“That is not true.”
Granny and Miss Hattie exchange a look.
“I saw that.”
They both burst out laughing. I laugh too because they’re not wrong.
But underneath it, something else has already started counting down. Not steps.
Days.
I don’t want to count.
I can feel the number anyway.
At the doctor’s office, Granny checks in like a celebrity trying to avoid the paparazzi. “Madeline Donovan,” she tells the receptionist. “The leg. The legend. The comeback tour.”
The receptionist looks to be in her early twenties and one bad patient away from quitting her job. “Date of birth?”
Granny gives it to her, then lowers her voice. “Put down that I’ve suffered bravely.”
Miss Hattie steps beside her. “Can you also note she’s been impossible?”
“Yes,” I say. “That should absolutely be documented.”
Granny turns slowly toward me. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
We sit in the waiting room for less than five minutes before Granny starts making friends against everyone’s will.
Honestly, five minutes is longer than I expected.
She asks a man in a wrist brace what happened.
“Tennis elbow,” he says.
“At your age?” she says. “Ambitious.”
Thankfully, he laughs.
A teenage boy on crutches gets an unsolicited lecture about letting people sign his cast with cheap markers.
“The bad ones bleed,” Granny warns. “Then you’ve got sentiment and ugly handwriting trapped together forever.”
She stops a nurse walking by to ask if they validate parking. The nurse says no. Granny sighs heavily. “What’s the world coming to.”
She nudges my knee with the tip of her shoe. “You’re awfully quiet.”
“I’m enjoying the spectacle.”
“Liar.”
Miss Hattie pats my arm. “You are a little quiet today.”
“I’m fine.”
Granny studies me over the rim of her glasses. The look is brief but sharp enough to make my stomach tighten. As if she knows where my brain wandered and is deciding whether to challenge it in public or save it for the car.
Before she can choose, the door swings open. “Madeline?”
Granny lifts her hand in a little wave. “That’s me.”
The cast room is freezing and decorated in varying shades of beige. The kind of room designed by people who think color is a medical condition and neutral is the cure.
The tech wheels in a cast saw. Granny stares at it suspiciously. “That looks homemade.”
“It’s standard,” he says.
“Well, I want the high-standard version.”
“It won’t cut your skin.”
The saw starts buzzing loudly. “If this goes sideways,” she tells him, “I want it noted that I came in here filled with trust and optimism.”
“You came in here full of complaints about parking,” I say.
“I’m full of a lot of things.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” I mumble.
Miss Hattie starts cackling. The tech bites the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh. Granny turns her head toward me. “Emor—“
The cast cracks.
The tech spreads the two halves apart, and the room instantly smells like plaster dust and dirty sock.
He peels back the soft wrap underneath, and suddenly there it is.
Her leg.
Pale. Smaller than the other one somehow. Fragile in a way the cast had hidden.
Granny looks down. “Well,” she says after a breath. “That’s upsetting.”
Miss Hattie presses a hand to her chest. “Maddy.”
“No one prepared me for the dehydrated ghost leg.”
She looks at the tech. “Removal should come with self-tanner.”
“It’s normal,” he says.
“Normal is a very low bar.”
The doctor comes in flipping through her chart while Miss Hattie stands behind him, making wildly inappropriate hand gestures every time he says words like stiffness.
Granny is visibly trying not to laugh.
The doctor hands me printed pages. Just a few sheets of paper. Nothing dramatic. My fingers close around them, and something in my stomach drops hard enough to make me briefly dizzy.
The doctor keeps talking.
Granny keeps negotiating.
Miss Hattie keeps behaving like she’s one joke away from being escorted out by security.
But all I can hear is the soft shuffle of paper in my hands.
“Resume normal activity,” Granny repeats.
The doctor nods. “Gradually.”
She waves that away.
“Gradually,” he emphasizes.
“Of course,” she says, not meaning a word of it.
He turns to me like maybe I’m the responsible adult in the room. I genuinely don’t know why people keep making this mistake.
“No driving for a little while,” he says.
Granny scoffs. “I can drive today.”
“You absolutely cannot drive today,” I say.
Miss Hattie lifts one finger. “She’s known to have depth perception issues when she’s smoking.”
“I do not.”
“You smoke?” the doctor and I say at the same time.
“Recreationally,” Granny says. “And not while I’m driving, Hattie.”
I stare down at the papers in my hands.
I thought I’d be ready for this.
I thought if I stood on the edge of leaving long enough, eventually it would stop feeling like a cliff. Pack a bag. Say goodbye. Get in the truck and put miles between me and Blue Crab Bay.
I thought the whole point of having a reason to stay was that leaving would make sense once the reason was gone.
Granny plants both hands on the chair and stands.
“Slowly,” the doctor reminds her.
Miss Hattie rises too, ready to catch her.
“I’ve got it.”
“That’s exactly what you said before you broke it,” Miss Hattie says.
The first step is wobbly. The second is better. By the third, Granny has that stubborn look she gets when she’s decided pride will be doing at least half the work. The sting behind my eyes arrives so fast it feels rude.
Miss Hattie starts clapping. “That’s my girl.”
Granny lifts her chin. “Well. The bitch still works.”
The doctor coughs into his arm. I laugh because if I don’t, I’m afraid I might cry in a room beside a saw and a skeleton.
She’s okay. She’s walking. Complaining. Bossing people around.
I feel relieved. I also feel like the ground just moved underneath me.
At the front desk, Granny tells the receptionist to “let the town know I was brave.”
“I don’t live in your town.”
Granny pats the counter. “You’re missing out.”
By the time we get back to Blue Crab Bay, word has spread.
Of course it has.
I pull into The Point’s shell parking lot and see Jake crossing the footbridge with Hank trotting beside him.
Hank spots the truck and starts arfing before we’re even parked.
“There’s your welcoming committee, honey,” Miss Hattie says.
My mouth starts to smile.
Because he’s—he’s just here.
He knew Granny had the appointment today, so he showed up.
It’s the kind of thing he does.
Jake reaches us as I climb out of the truck. He opens Miss Hattie’s door, then circles around to Granny. “How’d it go?”
Granny puts her hand in his and steps down carefully. “They didn’t validate parking.”
His eyes drop to the brace before lifting back to her face. “You okay?”
“I’m better than okay. I’m liberated.”
Hank sniffs at her leg, deeply unsure about the new development. “Don’t be dramatic,” Granny tells him fondly. “It’s still there.”
Jake smiles and offers his elbow. “Need an arm?”
“I need twenty years taken off and a better gin rummy partner.”
“Is that a no?”
“It’s a maybe.”
I watch him offer again, easy and patient, and Granny finally takes it. She was always going to. She simply wanted the satisfaction of being asked twice.
The knot in my stomach tightens another turn.
Miss Hattie rounds the truck and stops cold. She stares at the empty space near the bridge. Then looks at Granny. Then back at the empty space. Her hand flies to her chest. “Where’s the scooter?”
Granny sighs. “They picked it up this morning.”
Miss Hattie looks genuinely devastated. “A piece of my soul left with it.”
Jake ducks his head, shoulders shaking.
“Don’t you laugh, Jake Wheeler. You didn’t feel the wind in our hair.”
“I heard the trash cans,” he says.
“That was one time.”
“That was several times.”
“Two and a half,” Granny corrects.
“We have lost our freedom chariot, Maddy. I will find it if it’s my last dying breath.”
Everyone starts laughing.
All four of us stand here in the September breeze, laughing, and I want to freeze the moment somehow. Take a picture so I can revisit it. Proof that for one minute all of us existed together exactly like this.
Happy.
The door to Holey Moley opens. Mrs. Kravitz appears first with her phone already raised. Frank follows behind her, wiping his hands on his shirt, and Mr. Humphrey trails after them.
Frank bows his head solemnly. “Rest in peace, pink cast.”
Mr. Humphrey hmphs in either agreement or indigestion. With him, it’s always a coin toss.
Inside, the radio is playing a song about getting past the pain and love finding a way. Of course it is.
The glass case has a SOLD OUT sign in front of the blueberry crumb bars that are very obviously not sold out.
Hank bounces off an inner tube and barks at it like it assaulted him.
Jake steps closer to steady Granny while she lowers herself onto a chair.
It’s such a small thing. I’ve watched him do little moments like this all summer.
Showing up before he’s asked. Holding doors.
Making space. Remembering things. Taking care of people like it’s as natural to him as breathing.
All those quiet things nobody applauds because they aren’t flashy enough to be noticed.
I’ve been so stupid.
Not in my usual way where I know I’m doing the dumb thing while doing it.
In the way where I stand in the middle of something extraordinary and keep telling myself it’s temporary because temporary feels safer.
Jake looks over at me. “You okay, Mo?”
There are so many answers my mouth would trip over all of them.
I’m terrified.
Relieved.
Not ready for this to be over.
Standing here with the words on the tip of my tongue I should’ve said ten years ago instead of thank you.
“Just tired.”
He watches me for a second. That careful, quiet look like he can see straight through the lie and is kind enough not to embarrass me with it. Then he nods too. “All right,” he says softly. “I guess I’d better go. Will I see you later?”
“I don’t know.”
Something shifts in his expression. Not hurt exactly. Recognition. “You don’t have to run every time something gets close,” he says gently.
“I’m scared,” I admit.
“Of me?”
“Of…” I swallow. “What happens if I’m not temporary.”
Jake steps closer and puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me directly in the eyes.
“You think I don’t know there’s a clock on this?” he asks quietly. “I wake up every day counting how many mornings I’ve got left with you here.”
“I don’t want to make this harder,” I whisper.
“Mo.” His voice stays soft. “It’s already hard.”
Then Jake lifts his pinky.
I stare at it because suddenly I’m seventeen again, sitting beside him on the dock, pretending promises can protect people from anything.
Then I hook mine with his.
“No running,” he says.
I exhale slowly. “No running,” I echo.
We don’t kiss.
We don’t move closer.
We just stand there in the middle of Holey Moley with our pinkies linked like two idiots making childhood treaties against heartbreak.
Jake lets go first, but doesn’t pull away. More like giving me room to decide what I’m going to do with the promise I just made.
“I’ll see you later,” he says softly. Not a question this time.
Then he turns and walks out with Hank waddling behind him.
And I stand there staring after him, understanding something I should’ve understood a long time ago.
The cast was never the only thing holding me here.
It was just the easiest thing to point at.
Because the other thing—
The other thing just walked out the door.