“What about Ella?”
“If she loves you she’ll wait for you.”
Four years was a long time to wait when you were in your childbearing years. So why hadn’t he been in a hurry to start a family before the scholarship offer had turned his life upside down?
“I have no idea what to study,” he said. “The scholarship says that I have to complete a four-year degree or pay the money back.”
Nonnie’s snort would have fit in better at the bar she used to tend than it did in the clean and pretty home she kept.
“You got ideas springing out your ears, Mark. It’s time someone besides me and the dinner table listens to them.”
“I just know what could be done better at the plant. And I know better than to shoot my mouth off down there.”
“You got life-altering ideas, Markie-boy. I’m old, but I’m not out of touch. Our world’s changing fast and the things you talk about, the way things are being redone so fast and the danger in those gases that aren’t being tended to, you know how to fix some of that. Look at all the work you’ve been doing in fire forensics. Hell, even ten years ago they was still using mostly guesswork to determine things about them fires, and you already brung modern science to Bierly with your volunteer fire work. Maybe, if you had the schooling and the position it would give you, you could have saved Jimmy.”
An explosion on the line the previous winter had killed his best friend. And now Rick Stanfield was working in Jimmy’s place.
“Jimmy didn’t follow the handbook, Nonnie.”
No one did. The rules in the book didn’t coincide with the cost-saving methods upper management expected them to use. But that was his issue to take up with the bosses.
“You’re wasting your God-given talents here.”
She was his grandmother and, for all intents and purposes, his sole parent from the day he was born. Her perceptions were a tad bit skewed where he was concerned.
“What will we do with this place?”
“Rent it out, furnished, as soon as someone answers the ad I put out on the internet. Just need enough to pay taxes. Wilbur’ll watch it for us in the meantime.”
Looking around him, taking in the scarred solid cherry-wood tables he’d learned to dust when he was four, the beige tweed couch that still carried the faded stain of the cherry Popsicle he’d thrown up after he’d had his tonsils out, the threadbare carpet that Nonnie had taught him to dance on because he was refusing to learn with other boys as mock partners in gym class, Mark couldn’t come up with any more excuses.
“We aren’t going, Nonnie. Twenty years ago, you could have dragged me to the truck by my ear and made me go, but not now. You need me now. And I’m staying here.”
It bothered him to play the health card, but leaving Bierly would kill both of them. Nonnie didn’t have many years left—not enough to risk four of them in an unfamiliar world across the country while he wasted time learning things he would never use just to have another piece of useless paper hanging on the wall.
Chances were she wouldn’t live long enough to frame the damn thing.
He watched as Nonnie’s shoulders dropped inward, her chin falling to her chest as her body leaned forward, and hated that he’d had to cause such abject defeat in the woman who had always championed him. Always fought for him and her right to keep him with her.
And then he saw the folder she’d bent down to retrieve from the thin wire basket he’d designed to fit on the outside wheel base of her chair. A second manila folder. Also half an inch thick.
The mass shook as she reached out bony, blue-veined fingers to hand it to him.
Confused, Mark opened the file. It also contained printed pages from the internet. Housing availability. And receipts. One for a sale. And one for the rental of a room in an assisted living facility.
“I don’t understand.”
She stared him down silently.
“You just said you were coming with me.”
Nonnie was the only person he knew who could deliver a taking-down without saying a word.
“You sold the land?” Ten acres behind the house. Her garden.
He glanced again at the second folder.
She had her own power of attorney. There’d been no reason for her not to have it. She was of sound mind.