They ate, enjoying their meal without talking more. He liked that about Grandma. She understood he didn’t always like empty chatter. Mom had trouble understanding that, but Grandma not only understood it, but seemed to enjoy the quiet, too.
He watched her as he ate. She might look pale without her makeup, but her appetite was healthy, and her hands seemed steady, nor did she hesitate in any of her movements. She doesn’t look sick. Mom is probably being overly cautious, as usual.
Gray tried to cut Mom some slack. He’d felt Dad’s death deeply, and it had been even harder on Mom. But unlike her, he’d gotten help when he’d struggled, finding a good counselor and taking medication and even using some of Ava Dove’s specialty tea to ease his more stressful days. But Mom wasn’t the sort to even admit she needed help. Stubborn and proud, that’s what she is.
Grandma pushed her plate away. “Now, that was a good lunch.”
“A perfect lunch.” Gray dropped his napkin on his empty plate, got up and collected Grandma’s, and carried both dishes to the sink. He refilled his water glass, and then brought the coffeepot to the table. He poured coffee into Grandma’s almost-empty mug. “Milk?”
“Lord, no. Cream, please. It’s in the fridge.”
He replaced the coffeepot and brought her the cream, glancing at the clock. “I’ve got to go. If I leave now, I’ll have time to stop by the lumberyard.”
She’d just poured cream into her coffee, but at this, her shoulders sagged. “You can’t stay?”
“I wish I could, but I’ve got things to do. The electrician is coming, and I have to be at the house when he gets there.”
She frowned. “Surely someone else could meet him.”
The complaint he heard in her voice surprised him. He regarded her a long moment before he sat back down and crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s going on?”
She pouted, turning her coffee mug this way and that. “It’s stupid, and I know it, but I hate being alone all day.”
“So don’t be alone. Go somewhere. Go shopping or head to work with Mom and—”
“I can’t.” Sadness seemed to weigh down her thin shoulders. “I wish I could, though.”
The wistfulness in her voice made him pause. “Why can’t you?”
She rested her elbows on the table, her hands clasped around her mug. “It’s about your mom and me.”
Of course it was. “Grandma, you don’t have to tell me anyth—”
“I want to,” she said sharply. Her tone seemed to surprise her, because she winced, and then added in a calmer voice, “To be honest, I need someone to talk to and you’re it.”
He eyed her warily. “I refuse to get in the middle of a disagreement between you and Mom.”
“I’m not going to involve you. I just want to tell you what’s going on.”
He supposed he couldn’t fault her for that. Or stop her, for that matter. He sat back in resignation.
She stared into her mug for a moment. “A long time ago, I made a mistake that affected your mother in a way that…” Grandma sighed and pushed her mug away. “It was hard on her, and I knew it would be, but I never expected her to take it quite the way she did.”
He took a drink of his water and waited.
“When you have children, they don’t give you a how-to book, so you learn by making decisions. And sometimes by making mistakes. Most of those mistakes are little things, stuff they can forgive, if they even notice. But once in a while, you can make a doozy of a mistake, one that hurts everyone.” She used one finger and absently turned her coffee mug in a circle, her expression pensive. “When I left your grandpa Don, I believed Jules would live with me. I never expected that she’d demand to stay with him. But she did.” Grandma’s lips tightened. “She didn’t just refuse to live with me—she refused to talk to me, too.”
Gray knew a little about this time in his mother’s and grandmother’s lives, but not enough to have an opinion. “I’m sure you both were doing your best during what must have been a difficult time.”
She shot him a hard look. “Don’t think I didn’t fight for her, because I did.”
He hadn’t any such thought. To smooth the moment over, he murmured, “Of course you did.”
It worked. Calmed, she returned her gaze to her mug. “Lord, how I fought for her. But she was adamant. Sat right there in court and told the judge she didn’t want to live with me now or ever. Said I’d abandoned her and her dad, and she didn’t want to leave him, her friends, or this house.” Grandma blinked back tears. “I lost her, Gray. I didn’t expect that. Maybe I was naïve…. I don’t know.”
He pulled a napkin from the holder and slid it across the table. Grandma wiped her eyes and muttered, “Thank you.”
It was obvious to everyone who’d ever seen his mother and grandmother together that something was off between them. He and Mark knew it had to do with the fact that Grandma had divorced Grandpa, but until now, Gray hadn’t truly gotten a sense of what had gone wrong. He could see them both—his mom too angry to be reasonable and stubbornly refusing to listen to her own mother, and his grandmother hurt and confounded by that anger, never quite adequately explaining her side of the situation. He loved his grandma, but she wasn’t the best communicator when it came to her emotions—or other things, either.
Naturally Mom had never talked about any of this with either him or Mark. It was just like her to hide anything from them she thought might be “difficult.”
His jaw tightened. She still acted as if he and Mark might fold at the first flash of a problem. For the love of heaven, Mark practically runs the Moonlight, while I’ve already made a killing as a food chemist working in Atlanta.
It hadn’t been easy, but he’d worked long hours at an agricultural development company for seven years after college. The job had been grueling, but he’d gotten to work with some of the most distinguished and notable scientists in the world, and his research had received numerous awards. Best of all, he’d single-handedly led his team to a huge breakthrough that had contributed to the rise of healthier organic farming and left him wealthy from his portion of the patent. And yet Mom worries I’m too fragile to hear about an ancient childhood disagreement with my grandma. Sheesh.
Grandma pulled another napkin from the holder and dabbed at her eyes.
She looked so upset that his chest tightened in response. Recognizing the familiar feeling, he pushed his glass of water away, got up, went to the cabinet, and pulled out a canister of Ava’s specialty tea. He poured some water into the teakettle that sat on the back burner and turned it on. “Go on, Grandma. I’m listening.”
She sighed. “The last few months after John’s stroke were difficult. For months, I sat by his bed, watching until he finally slipped away.” She absently toyed with her paper napkin, folding it this way and that. “He was one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. Watching him made me realize how fragile life is. How swiftly it can disappear.”
Gray had always liked Granddad John. To be honest, he’d liked him better than Grandpa Don, who cared only about a very few and specific things—the restaurant business, the Moonlight Café, and little else. But Granddad John made an effort to have things to talk about with both Mark and Gray. Once Gray began studying chemistry, Granddad John would email him articles he thought were interesting, many of them about new developments and regulations.