Chapter Fifty-Six
This time, I bring the chocolate cake.
Gran’s eyes widen as we come through the doorway, all five of us—me, Brian, Piper, Eliza, and Evie. She sits up straighter, adjusts the quilt over her lap.
“Happy birthday, Gamma!” Evie croons, clapping her hands together. “Present?”
“Oh, look at you, sweetheart, of course I have a present for you! Here—” Gran looks around the room as though she might see something appropriate to give a three-year-old. She plucks a tissue from a box and hands it to Evie, who giggles with excitement.
“Gran, it’s important she learn she doesn’t get a present on someone else’s birthday.”
“Mom says you’re turning eighty-six,” Eliza whispers shyly, pressing a finger to Gran’s bedsheets.
“Am I?” Gran’s eyes go wide. At first, I think it’s in mock surprise, but then as she blinks from where she sits in her bed, I realize she doesn’t recognize a single one of us.
She’s just playing along, following the script.
A cute kid runs in and asks for a present, you give them one.
My heart sinks a little, but I press forward.
“It’s Nadia,” I say, sitting nearby. “I’m your granddaughter. How are you today?”
She tilts her head, furrows her brow, nods. “I’m all right, I guess. How are you? What did you say your name is?”
“Nadia.” I smile tightly, pretend my girls aren’t watching and confused, because at their ages, they can’t begin to understand memory loss.
It’s the main reason I don’t bring them.
But today, on Gran’s birthday, I wanted to at least try—she’s been asking to see them, after all.
It was possible she’d have a lucid moment or two.
“Hey, Gran.” Piper leans close, kisses her head. Gran smiles up at her, even though she obviously doesn’t know who she is either.
“It’s your birthday,” I say. “We brought a cake.”
“Oh, how lovely. Thank you.” She admires the homemade chocolate cake the girls helped decorate with about a million sprinkles, and Brian sets it on the bedside table.
“What have you been up to today?” I slowly tick through my list of easy conversational questions. Whoever lives inside my gran right now, she must be a little afraid, not knowing who she is, where she is, who we are.
Beneath it all, I can’t stop thinking, I might have been wrong—perhaps she’s not like me.
Which isn’t fair. It’s not my gran’s job to be a psychopath.
I just thought, maybe, maybe, since she’d so clearly seen me as I am—since she knew how to shoot a gun and sneak alcohol and had a certain sort of ferociousness.
And maybe because she clearly had an affair at some point.
But those things don’t necessarily mean she was a killer. They don’t mean she was like me. It was only my imagination, me wanting to see her how I needed her to be to make me feel better about myself. Oddly, I do feel better about myself.
I won’t say I’m perfect. I won’t say I’m in control of the monster one hundred percent of the time. But Gran was right—I’m a good mom.
Brian is alive, and for the first time, we are being honest with each other.
Well, mostly. I can’t tell him everything.
The girls are happy and healthy, and our family is still together.
Victoria has stayed in touch—which means if Ian ever decides to come back our direction, I’ll have notice.
Though sometimes I wonder if we should move far, far away.
Change our names. Become different people.
But today, Gran is alive and celebrating her eighty-sixth birthday, and even if she’s not herself, at least we can come visit as a family.
I’ll be grateful for what I do have today and deal with the rest of it—that Ian is still out there somewhere, that he must be who put a hit on Brian, and that he has some odd interest in me—well, I’ll deal with all that tomorrow.
“No lighting the candles!” I grab for the Bic in Brian’s hand just as he goes to ignite them. “Sorry, they have—” I gesture to the oxygen meter on the wall. “It could cause an explosion.”
Something I know from personal experience. Let’s just say that being an old mobster doesn’t save you from people like me.
“Oh god, sorry.” Brian flushes. “I didn’t realize.”
“The candles are just for looks.”
“In that case—Gran, can I cut you a slice of your birthday cake?” He stoops down to put himself at eye level with my grandmother, who smiles so sweetly at him, a twinkle in her eye.
And then she says, “Dear god, Charles Zimmerman, is that you?”
Brian’s eyes go wide, but I’ve coached him—usually, we just go with whatever Gran says. It’s less likely to lead to her becoming more confused and upset. The general idea is to let people in her position live the happiest life they can, whatever that means.
“Um, yes. Good to see you, Betty.”
She scowls. “You left me at the altar.”
“I did?”
“He did?” This snags my attention. Piper is busy playing a card game with the girls, and I step closer, lean in.
Gran married when she was eighteen. How would anyone have left her at the altar?
I flash back to that photo in Paris, the suggestion that Gran had another layer to her life I know nothing about…
Gran leans in, raises one brow. “We would have been infamous, you know. You and me. You missed out big-time, buddy. I went it alone, you know, and woooheee, was it a wild ride!”
“I missed out?” Brian manages. “You did what?”
A smile curves at my lips—it seems I haven’t quite yet unraveled the mystery that is my grandmother.
All I can think of is that she didn’t say famous—she said infamous.