I didn’t know how to respond to his words, so I didn’t, and in the end, it didn’t matter because the next words he spoke upended my entire world.
“I keep meaning to ask and keep forgetting,” he said, oblivious to the turmoil I was experiencing inside at the moment. “How is your grandmother doing?”
Chapter 14
Piers
I hadn’t lied to her. I had been meaning to ask how her grandmother was doing. Frankly, I thought it was a bit strange Bri had yet to bring up the woman. Seriously? We’d spent years together thinking we had no family, and one day her grandmother shows up out of the blue and sweeps her away before she can say goodbye to anyone, and she never mentions her? Not even once?
But to see Bri’s face after I asked how the lady’s doing, you’d have thought she’d never heard of her. It seemed fruitless to repeat the question—she’d obviously heard it the first time—so I waited for her response.
“What grandmother?” she finally asked, her expression completely blank.
Her reply pissed me off. What grandmother? That was her answer to me after leaving me all those years ago?
“What grandmother?” I repeated back to her. “I was only aware of one. Have you been reunited with both of them?”
Her blank expression crumbled into grief. “What kind of game are you playing with me? You know I have no family.”
Something was wrong. Neither her expression nor her words made sense within the parameters of our current conversation. The room seemed to vibrate with a low-level buzz—or perhaps it was my brain; I wasn’t able to tell which. All I knew was that something was very, very wrong.
I took a deep breath. I’d dealt with a lot of shit in this world during my life. A little more wouldn’t kill me.
Making myself act far calmer than I felt, I started from the beginning. “When we were at that last children’s house, the day you left. I decided to wait for you to finish and walk home with you. Newsome drove by while I was waiting and said your grandmother had picked you up earlier.” I blinked back the wetness threatening to gather behind my eyes. Fucking bloody hell. I hadn’t cried in twenty-five years, and I for damn sure wouldn’t start now. Especially in front of the cause for the tears. “That’s the grandmother I was asking about, but if you have an answer for your other one, I’ll extend the question to her as well.”
“I can’t think of a way to reply to any of that garbage you just spewed.” She took a breath, probably to gear up for her next comeback. I beat her to it.
“No, the real garbage was you leaving to go off on your merry way and not to have the basic kindness to let me know.” I gritted my teeth. “Not one word.”
She didn’t reply, rather she stood there, obviously shocked that I called her out on her actions. She shook her head. “I don’t understand how you can make up all this stuff. That’s not the way it happened. Did you have a traumatic head injury you didn’t tell me about? Were you unconscious for months, living in an alternate universe where this grandmother of mine supposedly resides?”
Unbelievable. Yes, people lied. It was a given. But normally they’d come around and admit their deceit or at least try to joke about it when confronted.
No problem. Obviously, my current approach wasn’t working out the way I’d thought it would. Irksome, yes, but not the end of the world. I crossed my arms, straightened my shoulders to take advantage of my full height, and spoke in the calm voice I used while in the middle of high-stakes negotiations. “Let’s go about this another way. You tell me your recollection of that day’s events.”
I truly thought she’d give up at that point and concede she’d left with her grandmother. As it turned out, I couldn’t remember a time I’d been more wrong. Not only did she not give up or concede, but she squared her shoulders and gave me that look. The one all women have. The one designed to make your balls shrivel up into raisins. Normally, I held my own against the Look, but I struggled with the one she gave me. Probably because the low-level buzz in my brain hadn’t stopped yet.
“You are an ass for making me relive this, but fine.” The way she spoke left me no doubt she was anything but fine. “I finished my tutoring that day, and when I made it to the house, Mr. Newsome was waiting to tell me you had left. He said you were on your way to the school that had offered you the scholarship. I asked if you mentioned me at all, and he laughed. Then he told me the only thing you’d said was how glad you were to be leaving behind the burdens of your past.”
Completely gobsmacked, I couldn’t get my mouth to form any words. But I noticed the buzzing sound had increased.
“I never knew you considered me a burden.” She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. All the rage she’d displayed earlier was gone. In its place were hurt and heartbreak. “Why didn’t you say anything? I thought you wanted me to go with you to that school. I felt like such an idiot when I learned the truth.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not how it happened. I never said you were a burden. I never even thought it.”
She shrugged. My words wouldn’t convince her. I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what happened that day so long ago, but it was clear something had. She believed her side was correct as much as I believed my own. I remembered hearing once that there were, in fact, three sides to every story: his side, her side, and what actually happened.
With only two sides, we needed one more. There were probably several ways to get the full story, but in that moment, knowing the third side felt unimportant when compared to proving to Bri I had never considered her a burden.
“I know my words alone aren’t enough to convince you otherwise,” I said in reply to her shrug. “But I have something that might.”
Bri said nothing. Rather, her eyes followed my hand as I reached for my wallet. Inside and nestled alone was a worn sheet of folded paper. Before this conversation, I wasn’t sure why I’d kept it all these years. But as I slipped the paper out and gave it to Bri, I was pretty sure it was for this exact moment in time.
“What is it?” she asked.
I nodded toward it. “Open and see.”
Her fingers trembled, working to unfold the square. Though I’d carried it with me for years, I very rarely opened it. There was no need for me to see the paper because I knew how it looked and word for word what it said.
When it was unfolded completely, she looked up at me.
“Read it,” I told her. “That’s what I wanted to show that day. That’s why I was waiting for you to come out.”
Her eyes dropped back to the letter. Simply stated, it informed me that Bri had also been selected to receive a scholarship. As it turned out, she’d applied shortly after I had, and they had made the decision to award her the scholarship for her grade level before my ultimatum that I would not attend without her.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her eyes once more watery as more tears threatened.
“You were supposed to go with me,” I said. “There’s no way I would have left without you. But I had to because you left me first. You didn’t even wait to see if you got in.”