Chapter Fourteen
This would be so much easier to do if I could just change my Facebook status,” Gracie muttered on her way to her folks’ house the next day. “It could say I’m in love, and I don’t care if you like him or not!”
She giggled nervously as she parked in the driveway. “That would make Mama drop with a heart attack, and then I’d feel guilty.”
Her laughter dried right up when her mother stepped out onto the front porch and waved.
Nothing was funny anymore. Gracie thought of Tina sitting in the Tomorrow Tree and trying to drag up enough courage to knock on Mae’s door.
Or having to make that call to her parents.
She sympathized with her as she got out of the vehicle.
Elana fussed the entire time it took Gracie to walk across the yard and up onto the porch. “Come on in out of the heat. I’ve made cookies, and we have a chilled bottle of wine. You are going to be sorry that you didn’t spend more time with us when we move.”
If Elana had her way about things, Gracie would still be going to bed every night in the same pink room with lace curtains she had slept in from the time she could walk until she went to college.
She would even bet that the same collection of dolls was sitting on her dresser, and that Elana had the housekeeper dust them every single week.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know when I left that a tornado would take out the café, Mama,” Gracie said.
“If you stayed close to home, you would have been here to help us, but oh, no, you have to run off with your friends,” Elana continued to gripe.
“I bet you talked to Tina more than you did me and your dad while you were gone, didn’t you?
Don’t bother to answer that. I don’t even want to know if I’m right. ”
“I didn’t keep track of how many times I talked to her or anyone else.
I worked most of the time I was gone. I finished a book and have been working on new illustrations for another one,” Gracie said, and tried to change the subject.
“Does it seem strange to y’all to stay at home and not have to go to work every morning?
I can’t remember a time when you and Daddy weren’t running the café from morning until night. ”
“Your books won’t bring comfort to you when we are in our graves,” Elana snapped.
“We’ve been working with adjusters and hiring a lawyer to help us with all the paperwork, but it’s a nightmare that we never want to go through again.
We have decided that we need a fresh start closer to your brother. ”
Gracie threw an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “It makes me sad when you talk like that. I want both of you to live to be a hundred and still have enough energy to rock my babies.”
“Hmph . . . ,” Elana snorted. “At the rate you are going, there won’t be any grandbabies from you.”
Gracie sniffed the air and tried one more time to get her mother out of her feel-sorry-for-me mood. “You know that your snickerdoodles are my favorite cookies. It’s so sweet of you to make them for me.”
Elana finally smiled. “I made an extra batch so you can take some home with you.”
“You are the best, Mama,” Gracie said, and led her mother inside the house.
Her father came out of the kitchen and hugged her. “I’m so glad you are here,” he said and sat down in his recliner.
Elana uncorked the wine and poured three glasses.
“What are we celebrating?” Gracie took a sip of her wine and picked up a cookie. If she had food in her mouth, maybe they would talk first, and she could put off telling them about Dakota a little longer.
“We don’t like you boarding at Mae’s house, so next month, when we move to New Mexico to be near your brother, we are going to let you live here rent-free,” Elana said.
John’s wrinkles deepened around his eyes when he smiled. “How does that sound?”
Gracie couldn’t jump up and down and squeal even though she knew that was the reaction they both wanted. She braced herself for the fallout and suggested, “Why don’t you sell the place?”
“Because we want you to live here—away from Tina O’Grady. She has always been trouble,” Elana frowned.
Gracie groaned silently and wished that she had let Dakota come with her to tell her parents. He had offered, but she thought it best that they each be alone when they told their folks.
“Thank you for the offer, but . . .” Gracie took two big gulps of wine. “This is tougher than I thought it would be.”
“Spit it out,” Elana said.
“I might be teaching school on a reservation in New Mexico. I’ll only be an hour from you when you get moved in with Matt. I’m leaving tomorrow to drive up there for the interview.”
Elana and John looked like they had been shot and were just waiting to fall over dead.
“I . . . I don’t mean to be unappreciative. Honest, I don’t, but it’s time for a change,” Gracie said, stumbling over the words.
“Why would you do that? You have a good job here.” Her mother’s frown deepened.
“Why would you want to live on a reservation,” her father growled, “when you can live here, teach at the school you are familiar with, and have this house?”
“I’m in love. My boyfriend’s name is Dakota Chatto, and he will be the principal in the same place where I’ll teach kindergarten and first grade,” she blurted out. “He is a good man, and you will like him a lot when you meet him.”
The silence was so thick that Gracie didn’t think a machete could cut through it—but Elana’s expression spoke volumes.
“We will probably get married before school starts,” she finally said, figuring that if she was going to be disowned, she might as well spill everything. “We’ve been seeing each other for more than a year, so this isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
Neither of her parents said a word.
“I didn’t tell you before now because I didn’t—”
“Trust us?” Elana spit the words out like they were bitter. “What is this Chatto name? It doesn’t sound Mexican.”
“He’s Navajo,” Gracie blurted out. “He has been teaching at a college in Tucumcari, and he is not of our faith.”
“The house is off the table,” Elana said, with enough of a chill in her tone to freeze a good portion of hell.
“No, it is not,” John disagreed. “If the interview does not go well, and she agrees not to marry this man, then she can have the house. And when we die, it will automatically be hers to do with what she wants, just like we told the lawyer.”
“Thank you again, Daddy, but I’m going to marry Dakota whether we get the jobs in New Mexico or not. I love him. He loves me. And we want to make a life together,” Gracie said in the calmest tone she could muster.
Elana picked up the platter of cookies. “I wish we would have never let you spend so much time with Walker and Tina. If you change your mind, the offer still stands, but only for this week. If you don’t want it, we’ll put it on the market.
We’ve hired a company to tear down the café and clean up the lot, and we will be selling that, too.
Then we will shake off the dust from this town and never look back. ”
Tears filled Gracie’s eyes. “Daddy, will you walk me down the aisle?”
John shook his head. “Only if you are married in the church.”
Elana marched off to the kitchen with the cookies in her hand.
“I’m so sorry you feel that way. If you met Dakota, you would see that he’s such a good man,” she said. “Will you at least meet him?”
“I’m sorry, too,” John said. “You have a week, my daughter, to figure out what is more important to you.”
Gracie stood up and started for the door.
She thought one of them might at least say something, but neither did.
She stood on the porch for five whole minutes, giving them time to talk about their decision and maybe change their minds, but no one even cracked the door.
Apparently, their minds were made up. She wouldn’t have their blessing in any way, shape, or form if she went against their wishes.
Finally, she crossed the yard, got into her SUV, and sat behind the wheel for another few minutes, keeping an eye on the windows to see if they even peeked around the curtain.
When they didn’t, she started the engine and began driving toward Tucumcari.
She needed to feel Dakota’s arms around her, to hear him repeat what he had said about them having enough in each other if their parents disowned them.
She was five miles out of town when she remembered that he was telling his parents that evening.
She parked on the side of the road and laid her head on the steering wheel.
She wasn’t sure if the tears were out of sadness or from anger, but she couldn’t contain them any longer.
They streamed down her cheeks and left wet spots on her shirt.
“I can’t show up at his folks’ home out of the blue.
” She slapped the steering wheel, turned the vehicle around, and drove back toward town.
She couldn’t go into her house with swollen eyes, either, and she needed time to figure out how to tell Cleo and Mae, so she went straight to the Tomorrow Tree.
The fallen branch took up a lot of the space where she, Walker, and Tina always sat to discuss their problems, but she eased down among the leaves that had already begun to wilt.
She drew up her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and dropped her chin in pure agony.
“Will they change their minds when they have time to think about it?”
A sparrow lit on a branch of the fallen limb and sang a sorrowful song.
“I hear you and understand,” she whispered as the tears flowed down her cheeks when she remembered something that her father told her as a child: “When your mother or I say no, we mean no, and we will never change our minds.”
She swiped her hand across her wet cheeks when Tina sat down beside her and gave her a side hug. Gracie laid her head on Tina’s shoulder, and more tears wet the shoulder of her friend’s T-shirt.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go very well?” Tina whispered.