The rustling of the bedcovers accompanied by a painful groan announced that the young woman was waking up. “Morning,” Rose mumbled, trying to bring green eyes into focus.
“Almost afternoon, actually,” Ronnie replied, putting down her work for a moment and turning to face her companion. “I don’t have much to offer in the way of brunch but if you want, I’ll run out and see if I can get some Chinese food.”
“Ooh, that sounds wonderful.” Rose’s eyes lit up as if she were receiving the biggest Christmas present in the world. “I meant to thank you again for bringing that to the hospital.”
“It doesn’t take much to make you happy, does it?”
The young woman cocked her head from side to side in thought before answering. “No, not really. I never had much, so extras like take-out food were out of the question.”
“How long have you been on your own, Rose?”
“Oh,” she blushed. “You don’t want to hear about me.”
“Sure I do.” Ronnie moved her chair closer and propped her stockinged feet on the edge of the bed. “Come on, it’ll be like a slumber party.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, Sunshine,” she cajoled, realizing she had used the pet name only after she had said it. She shifted and glanced at the window. “It’s cold outside. I’ll call for delivery and you can tell me all about Rose Grayson.”
“There isn’t really that much to tell. Certainly nothing particularly interesting.”
“Let me decide that,” Ronnie urged, her eyes pleading for the young woman to open up.
Rose looked down at the blanket for a moment, weighing her options and fears. She felt so safe, so cared for here. What if something she said made her new friend think differently of her?
But…there was nothing in Ronnie’s eyes to suggest she would judge anything that was said. Maybe if she skimmed over the details….
“Well, like I said, there really isn’t that much to tell. I was almost two years old when my parents died in a car accident. After that I lived with my grandmother until she got too sick to take care of me anymore.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Then I lived in different places until I was old enough to be on my own. That’s about it.”
“How old were you when your grandmother got sick?”
“Ten.”
“She was your only relative?”
“Yeah.”
“You know this feels more like an interview than a conversation,” Ronnie said, drawing a shy smile from the young woman. “Tell me a story about you. Tell me about something nice that happened to you when you were a child.”
“Something nice that happened to me, eh?” Rose pondered the thought for a moment before coming up with a suitable tale. “All right, but first you call for that food you promised.”
“Deal,” she replied.
A few minutes later the food had been ordered and it was now time for Rose to tell her story.
“Okay, it was when I was six or seven. My grandmother came to me early one morning and told me that we were going someplace special. She packed us lunches and we took the bus for what seemed like hours. We had to switch buses a couple of times before we got there.” Rose’s eyes gleamed at the memory and her gaze was many years away from the office in Ronnie’s house.
“She took me to the zoo. Not the little petting zoos that would come to the bazaars from time to time but a real zoo. There were so many animals…tigers, bears, seals…it was incredible. We spent the whole day there and ate lunch near the cage with the bear cubs.” She placed her hand on the older woman’s ankle and leaned in. “My grandmother told me not to feed them but when she wasn’t looking I threw the rest of my sandwich into their pit.”
“Sounds like a really nice day,” Ronnie said.
“Oh, it was. It was one of those perfect days when it wasn’t too hot or too windy or anything. Grandma even had a roll of dimes to put in the machines to get those pellets to feed the goats.” Rose leaned back against her pillow and smiled at the ceiling. “I fell asleep on the way back so I don’t remember much of that but I do remember how happy I was to be walking home with her from the bus stop.”
“Sounds like she loved you very much.”
“She did,” the young woman replied. “Grandma always found ways to make our time together nice. After the chores were done, we’d always play Monopoly or cards or something.” Rose’s eyes misted and she blinked back the pain that came with the memory.
“My grandmothers were always scrapping with each other,” Ronnie said, hoping that a tale of her own would help keep her friend from thinking of the sad times growing up. “They were both the typical mother-in-law. Grandma Cartwright never thought my mother was good enough and Grandmother Mitchell thought the same of my dad. You should have seen them at holidays.”
“Did you always have a lot of people around on the holidays?”
“Yup, and always here, too—well, until I took over. Now the parties are held at Susan’s house or at one of the cousin’s places. But back then, we usually had thirty or forty people here for family get-togethers.”
“Wow, it must have been chaos.” Rose pressed the remote button for the heating unit built into the bed, hoping it would help ease the steadily growing ache in her legs.
“Chaos is a nice way of putting it. Tradition is a big thing in both families and of course what was a Cartwright tradition wasn’t a Mitchell one. On some holidays there’d be fights ten minutes after everyone arrived.”
“Fights?”
“Oh, not physical ones…usually,” Ronnie grinned. “At Christmas usually it would start with what we were having for dinner then work its way up to how the tree was decorated.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope, swear to God.” She held her hand up in solemn oath. “Mother’s family always waited until Christmas Eve to put the star on the top but Dad’s side would put it up long before, when they put the tree up.”
“That seems like a silly thing for people to get upset about, especially at a time when they should just be happy to see each other,” Rose said, realizing perhaps Ronnie’s family was not as perfect as she thought they were.
“Well, maybe it was because my family saw way too much of each other. They all worked for Cartwright Corp. in one form or another.”
“You’d think that would make them closer.”
“Sometimes they were too close,” Ronnie replied. “It’s like a soap opera at times. We all know what’s going on in each other’s lives all the time. There’s no real privacy.”
“I never thought it could be so difficult. I guess, not having a family, I didn’t see the down side to having so many people around,” Rose admitted.