He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She laughed. “Yes, you do.”
He did.
She went on, as he knew she would. “You started this week off thinking everyone else was pissing you off.”
“They were. As usual.”
She shook her head. “No, baby. They were all just bein’ them.”
“Them bein’ them often pisses me off.”
She turned fully, wiping her hands on a towel, then tossing it aside. “Think about it. Think about how you really felt. Was this the usual pissed off? Or was this a soul-deep, everything sucks, nothing will ever make this better pissed off? Usually when they all piss you off”—She inclined her head in the direction of the dining room where a bunch of the family still sat—“you snap at ’em, write ’em a ticket, toss ’em in the bayou, and you feel better. You haven’t felt one bit better in days.”
Zander frowned deeper, opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head, and asked, “How do you do that?”
“Know what you’re feelin’ when you don’t even know for sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve felt it all myself. And seen lots of other people feelin’ it over the years. You know that bein’ heartbroken because you did somethin’ dumb isn’t unique to you, right?”
He leaned back against the counter behind him. “You’ve been heartbroken because you did somethin’ dumb?”
“More than I’d like to admit. And no, I’m not givin’ out details.”
“And you’re pretty sure that’s what I’m feeling?”
“Pretty sure,” she said with a nod.
“I’m still one of your smarter grandsons, you know,” he told her.
“Are you?” She didn’t look convinced. At all.
“I knew days ago that Caroline was why I was feeling this way. But I have a good reason for not going after her.”
“Do tell.”
“She wants to work with the FBI. And I think she’ll be amazing at that. It will be really good for her too. She needs to do…something big. Something more where she can feel fulfilled, feel like she’s fighting the good fight. So, I think she needs to do it.”
Ellie nodded. “I agree.”
“But I can’t keep her safe then. From the risks. From the…”
“Reality?” Ellie finally supplied. “The truth that the world is a tough place, and people can be really horrible, and there’s darkness everywhere?”
He blew out a breath. Ellie was in her seventies. She’d lived through natural disasters, illnesses, a divorce and remarriage to the love of her life, the deaths of people close to her. Of course, she knew life wasn’t always sunshine and roses.
“Yeah,” he said simply. “So, I let her go. So that she can do what she needs to do without my dumb ass gettin’ in her way, worrying, nagging her, distracting her, and making us both miserable.”
“That’s what you would have done?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah. Very likely. I might hold her back.”
“You won’t. Or if you try, she or one of us will call you on it and you’ll stop.”
God, she made it sound so easy.
“And you realize you’re full of shit, right?” Ellie asked.
“I’m full of shit to think I’ll be a pain in her ass?”
“No, I’m sure you’ll be that sometimes,” his grandmother said. “You’re full of shit thinkin’ you’re my smartest grandson.”
He rolled his eyes. “I said one of,” he muttered.
“You don’t understand what it means to keep someone you love safe,” Ellie told him.
“Really?” He pushed away from the counter, frustration coursing through him. He’d been without Caroline for a week because of his dedication to this family. He spread his arms wide. “It’s all I fucking do. It’s what I’ve dedicated my entire career, my whole damned life to, El. Don’t tell me I don’t know about keeping the people I love safe.”
She frowned at him and pointed a finger at his nose. “Don’t you get all sassy with me,” she told him. “I was keeping this family safe before your daddy even had the first idea where babies came from or that he wanted to make some with your mama.”
“Then you get it.”
“What I get, Zander darling, is that there are lots of ways to keep people safe. And physically safe is not the most important way.”
He just looked at her for a long moment. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I can’t keep you all safe from hurricanes. Or viruses. Or car accidents. Or falling off of ladders. Or cottonmouths or bull sharks in the bayou. Not fully.” Her expression gentled and grew a little sad. Then she smiled. “But I can give you a safe place to be. A place to come to, no matter what. A place to be sad, and angry, and brokenhearted, and sick. A place to be happy, to celebrate, to hear I love you, I believe in you, you can do it. That is the way we keep the people we love safe. We…are safe. For them to be who, what, and how they need to be. Whatever that is.”
Zander stared at his grandmother. He felt his throat tighten and he had to swallow hard. Memories rushed through his mind. Memories of her telling him and his brothers and cousins to slow down, to be careful, to mind where they were putting their hands, to stop, to “use their damned heads for something other than landin’ on”.
But they’d still gotten hurt sometimes. They’d still gotten sick. There had still been accidents, and illnesses, broken bones, and broken hearts. Owen’s mom, Cassie, had raised him on her own—with help from the family, of course, but without his dad. Maddie’s mom had been killed in a drunk driving accident and her dad had gone to jail. Mitch’s mom had left when he was a baby. The big explosion when they were teens had killed a lot of people and injured even more. Tommy had died.
But Ellie still loved big and hard, and her arms were always open to welcome more people into the family.
People found their place here. In Autre. With the Landrys. A place to be exactly how they were, how they wanted to be. A safe place.
Zander couldn’t breathe for a moment.
Ellie nodded, clearly reading his expression. “No one wants Caroline to be happy and fulfilled and loved more than you do, Zander. And that makes you her safe place, for all the ways she most needs to be safe.”
He finally sucked in a huge lungful of air. “Yeah,” he managed. But that was right. That was the only answer. Yeah. He could be that for her. For sure.
“Just to warn you though—protectors are given bigger hearts. That’s where the instinct to shield comes from. You’re one of those. But that bigger heart doesn’t make it stronger. Knowing the bad things that can happen, the way people can hurt others, the evil and darkness that’s out there…that will all chip away at it. A warrior’s heart is bigger so that little bits can break off and there will still be some left.” She paused. “But it still hurts when it breaks.”
He swallowed hard.
“And Caroline is one of those too. And it hurts to see our people hurting. You gotta be ready for that.”