“And I chose to keep you both hidden, even when she came looking all those years later.” She let out a shaky breath and cast her eyes to the floor. “If I were her, I’d hate me.”
“Don’t talk like that. Mom and I have both had great lives, thanks in large part to you.” I smiled wide, meaning each word with everything I had. “Plus, doesn’t time heal all wounds?”
She shook her head slowly on the other side of the door. I could just barely discern the motion.“Live long enough, and you’ll learn that’s not true,” she muttered eerily.
“But Nan,” I whined, not knowing what else I could say to make this better. I’d waited for months after finding out I had a secret grandmother—months for any clues to turn up and even more for the seagulls to locate her. I couldn’t justnot meet her. But I also hated to see Nan hurting like this.
“Please don’t ask me again,” she whispered. “You know I have a hard time saying no to you.”
“But I can’t do this on my own,” I insisted, not trying to burden her but rather to show how important she was to me—to this.
We both sighed.
“Then take Charles with you, or your mother for that matter,” Nan said before pressing the door shut between us.
The sound of overgrown claws scrabbled across the hardwood floor, then stopped.
“Mommy,” a small voice rose from beside me.
I glanced down to find Paisley staring up at me with a slowly wagging tail.
“I’ll go with you,” she volunteered before tucking her tail over her privates and dipping her head. “But I don’t think you should ask Nan again. She doesn’t like it.”
I sighed. Leave it to a dog to be more perceptive than me.“You’re right.” I bent down to scoop Paisley into my arms.
She immediately began to lick my face and make happy high-pitched noises.“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too.”
Technically, Paisley was Nan’s dog, but that didn’t stop her from calling meMommy. It worked, considering everyone in town called my grandmother Nan, even those who weren’t related. Also, I was the only human who could understand her, and Paisley loved shouting the maternal moniker whenever she got a chance.
Her first family had abandoned her to the animal shelter, so I think she needed the added reassurance that when she called out for her family, someone answered back in kind.
I carried Paisley with me as I headed back downstairs. Nan clearly needed some time to herself to process everything, but I needed someone to talk it over with.
Mom was out of the question. Yes, it washer birth mother I was planning to go meet, but I wanted to make sure our missing family member was receptive to us before involving Mom. It would be a much bigger blow to her—should this other woman reject us—than it would be to me. Although that would be a sting I’d have a hard time recovering from as well. Still, I loved my mom, and I wanted to protect her if I could.
Yes, my missing grandmother had tried to approach Nan years ago, but who was to say that time hadn’t hardened her heart to us?
There were so many unknowns in this situation, and no one I could turn to for advice, either. Because nobody else had gone through a situation like this before—at least not anyone I knew. And the last thing I wanted to do was entrust such a doozy of a family drama to strangers on an Internet message board or social media site.
I didn’t want to bother Charles at work, especially since he’d just taken the long weekend off and this was his first day back at the office. I decided to shoot him a quick text:Call me when you get a break at work. No rush.
Much to my surprise, my phone began ringing almost immediately after I hit send.
“What’s up?” Charles asked when I picked up the call.
“Oh, hey. I didn’t mean that you needed to call right away,” I chided him. “You need to focus on your work. At least that’s what you’re always telling me.”
He chuckled at my attempt to scold him. I normally never gave him guff like this, but I’d also been hoping for some more time to sort my thoughts out for myself before attempting to share them with him.
“Yeah, but it will be good to have a quick break before switching client files,” he said. “Long day ahead. Probably a long night, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized without knowing why.
“Nothing to be sorry for. This is what I signed up for when I became a lawyer. And you know I love it. Also, I love you…” He paused dramatically, and I could just picture the big goofy grin that accompanied this silence.“Fianc?e.”
A tiny thrill rushed through me.“I love you, too,fianc?.”
His smile came through in his words, and I was pretty sure it matched mine.“Now this time really tell me. What’s up?”
“Bravo found my grandmother,” I revealed, then pressed my lips into a tight line.
Charles sucked air in through his teeth.“Never a dull moment, huh?”
I smiled and shook my head even though he couldn’t see the gesture. Talking to him was just natural like that. It never felt like there was any distance between us when we chatted about our days. “Nope.”
“So when are we going to meet her? I am invited, right?”
I let out a giant sigh of relief.“Yes, please come with me,” I said so fast all my words ran into each other.
“Darling, you couldn’t keep me away. I want to be there for my fianc?e whenever and however I can. By the way, you’re my fianc?e.”
I smiled to myself. Oh, how I wished I could give him a giant hug of gratitude just then.“I love you, fianc?,” I said, twirling my hair like a giggling schoolgirl.
“Uh-oh,” Charles said and then let out a rolling groan. “Just got an urgent email. Gotta go, but I’ll call you when I take lunch. I can’t wait to hear all the sordid details. Bye. Love you.”
Well, there was a pretty major thing decided at least. I probably should have asked Charles first, considering I’d just agreed to be his partner in life. It was hard to break nearly thirty years of seeing Nan as my main partner and confidant, but I guess that was part of growing up. Growing. Changing.
I just hoped things wouldn’t change too much.
3
I spent the rest of that week trying on various outfits and attempting a cool new style with my hair. I’d only get one chance to make a first impression on my grandmother, and I really wanted her to like me.
It was silly, but a small part of me thought that if I nailed my outward appearance, I could tip the scales in my favor. After all, I knew next to nothing about this woman. Only that the grandpa I hadn’t known deemed her an unfit mother decades ago, and that the seagulls had hinted she might have strange abilities like mine. But how would I even be able to determine that? It’s not like I could come right out and ask her such a bizarre question. All that hard work I was doing to look good would go—whoosh—right down the drain.
As it turned out, Charles had a busy week at work but was putting in early mornings and long nights at the office so he could leave a couple hours early on Friday. Together, we would head to Katahdin and this cute little bed-and-breakfast we had decided to book based on the online reviews.
Nan made a full-time job of avoiding me. Rather than joining me for morning coffee, she’d brew a pot and leave it on the counter so that I could heat it up in the microwave myself. Each day she had a different reason for being gone, but I knew they were all excuses.
I couldn’t wait to punctuate this chapter of our lives with a big, fat period. We both needed to meet my missing grandmother and be done with it. The unknown that would come from this relationship had lingered over our heads for far too long.
With no new P.I. cases coming my way and every possible combination of clothing exhausted, I was quickly running out of ways to keep my hands and mind occupied. I attempted to lose myself in my favorite book series. But my brain was too busy with all its myriad questions to focus on the words before me.