Chapter 14 #2
Her phone rang half an hour later, Granny Mama’s number flashing on the screen. Claire answered so fast she missed the button and had to go back and swipe it again.
“I’m fine.” Granny Mama’s voice came through before Claire could speak, the preemptive reassurance of someone who knew they’d caused alarm and attempted to hold it at bay.
“Don’t drive fast. I just got a little dizzy getting up from the couch.
I’m sitting down and I’m perfectly fine.
Only reason I’m calling you is because the doctor told me to. ”
“I’m four minutes away.” Despite Granny Mama’s reassurance, her foot pressed harder on the gas. “Don’t move. Stay on the phone with me.” They didn’t talk, but hearing the steady breaths kept her from straight panic.
Granny Mama was on the couch when Claire came through the door, upright and alert and holding a glass of water. She looked unaffected, with normal skin tone and a firm grip when Claire took her pulse.
“Pulse is fine.” Granny Mama drank her water and sighed. “Blood pressure monitor is in the bathroom cabinet. Might as well check that too. I know you want to.”
It was fine. All of it was fine. One-eighteen over seventy-four, which her doctor would call excellent. Granny Mama had stood up too quickly, her body had overcorrected, and the dizziness had lasted mere seconds before passing. A non-event.
So why did her hands shake so much and her lungs tremble with every breath?
She sat on the coffee table across from her grandmother, the blood pressure cuff still in her hands, and tried to regulate the adrenaline flooding her system.
“Claire.” Granny Mama patted her hand. “I’m all right.”
“I know you are.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
Because this was why she’d come back. The dizzy spells and the doctor appointments and the medication schedules were the whole reason she’d uprooted in the first place.
How could she even think about leaving when Granny Mama continued having these spells? Granny Mama was all she had left.
Losing her wasn’t something she could mitigate with spreadsheets and math.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.” The rawness in her throat suggested tears, but they didn’t fall.
Granny Mama set down her water glass and leaned forward to put both hands on Claire’s face, her skin cool and her touch firm.
“Nothing is happening to me tonight.” Her thumbs pressed into Claire’s cheeks.
“And when something does happen, it will happen whether you are here or not. You, as brave and wonderful as you are, cannot add a single day to my life. God is the Author of our beginning and knows the date of our end. It’ll happen in God’s time, which is not something either of us controls.
” She released Claire’s face. “So, stop building your life around protecting me from what I can’t be protected from. ”
Claire’s eyes burned. She pressed her palms together between her knees and looked at the floor.
A knock at the front door made them both turn.
Luke stood on the porch, his outline visible through the door’s window. A tool bag hung from one hand, and he raised the other in a tiny wave.
Claire stood and opened the door, moving back to let him enter.
“I saw your light.” He looked past her at Granny Mama on the couch. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.” Granny Mama waved from the couch. “Small dizzy spell, fully recovered. Come in, Luke.”
“I came to fix the porch step.” He lifted the tool bag. “I’ve been meaning to for a couple weeks. I know it’s late.”
“It is late.” She almost tried to nudge him outside to keep her fool heart from falling for him right then and there. He’d taken time to come all the way out here to fix Gran’s porch. Again.
“I can come back.” He held her gaze.
She hesitated. “No, go ahead. I need to help Gran get ready for bed.” It took two tries to get her hand to let go of the doorknob and another ten seconds to convince her feet to move away from him.
Luke made it slightly easier when he retreated to the porch and began taking tools from the bag.
She left him to it and helped Granny Mama through her evening routine. By the time Gran was settled, the sounds from the porch had gone quiet and she slipped outside to investigate.
Luke sat on the top porch step, tool bag closed beside him, forearms resting on his knees.
Claire sat beside him and tipped her head up, letting the cool night air breeze over her face. A dog barked twice and stopped, followed by the low groan of a door opening and closing. She recognized the sound as the Manon family letting in their dog for the night.
“Thank you.”
He looked out at the dark yard. “Meant to come back sooner.”
They sat for a while without filling the silence. Claire had been around Luke long enough to know the difference between his silences. This one just needed to be accepted and not pushed to fill.
“I wasn’t honest with you in the parking lot Wednesday.” He took off his hat and dropped it over the post beside him. His hair fell forward in waves that curled around his ears, and he shoved them back while staring straight ahead.
She examined his profile for clues and found nothing. “What weren’t you honest about?”
He turned the hammer in his hands, swinging one end, then the other, before tapping it so lightly on the porch it didn’t even make a sound. “More what I didn’t say than what I did.”
Oookay. Whatever that meant.
“I don’t know how to want something this much without turning it into something I need to control. The one thing I can’t organize is whether you choose to stay, and not knowing the answer feels—” He stopped. “I’ve been using the uncertainty as a reason not to ask.”
Claire’s hands tightened together in her lap.
Her chest burned from holding her breath, and she let it out in a gush that left her lightheaded.
“I’m terrified of wanting something this much because I know what it costs to lose things you love.
My parents. The shop. The version of my life I thought I was building.
” She turned to look at him. “If I choose this, this place, these people, you, and it falls apart, I don’t think I have another rebuild left in me. ”
“Claire.” His voice roughened.
She pressed on. “It’s not noble. It’s not faith. It’s fear, and I’ve been dressing it up as practicality and professional distance and a job opportunity in Billings that I haven’t been able to make myself excited about no matter how many times I pull up the listing.”
Luke stilled. “You don’t want to go?”
“I’ve been criticizing you for building walls.” Her eyes stung but she held his gaze. “I built the same ones; I just used different materials.”
The hammer dropped onto the step with a soft thud.
Luke turned toward her, stretched his arm behind her back so they faced each other with nowhere to go, and stared at her.
“Then stay.” The usual gruffness in his voice deepened.
“Not because of Granny Mama or the hospitality work or because it makes sense. Stay because you want to. Stay here with me.”
Her breath caught.
He raised his other hand, his knuckles trailing down her jaw. “I know I’m asking you to take a risk.”
“That’s not—” She stopped short, unable to continue.
She never wanted to kiss anyone more than she did right this instant.
Luke. Always Luke. She pulled back just enough to break the spell.
“I can’t do this halfway, when I haven’t made up my mind for sure.
If I’m going to do this, it needs to happen when I’m clear-headed.
If I fall into it because a porch step got fixed and the night was the right kind of dark and I kissed you because my heart is begging me to let go, then I’ll wonder tomorrow if any of it was real. ”
Luke’s hand stayed where it was for a moment.
“Okay. You’re right.” He stood and picked up the tool bag.
His back stayed toward her for a long moment, shoulders squared against whatever he was working through.
Then he turned and looked at her on the step.
The unguarded look in his eyes gouged into her ribs, driving the pain straight to her heart.
He looked so vulnerable, and she’d shut him down again. “Goodnight, Claire.”