It's Never too Late

“Yeah.”

“You still haven’t told me how she reacted to the news.” Nonnie had told her once that she’d love to live long enough to see Mark holding his own child in his arms.

“She spit.”

“What? On the floor? Nonnie wouldn’t do that. She’s a stickler for clean floors.” Addy had caught the old woman with a bucket and a mop moving slowly over the kitchen floor with her wheelchair earlier that week and discovered that mopping floors was one of the items on Nonnie’s list of daily chores.

“I told her at the dinner table. Her plate was empty. And she spit on it.”

“She doesn’t like Ella?”

“Not any more than Ella likes her.”

“Ella doesn’t like Nonnie?”

“She’s jealous of Nonnie’s influence on me.”

“Her influence on you? It’s the other way around, I’d say. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Nonnie say, ‘Mark doesn’t want me to do this, or eat that, or try...’”

He chuckled. “Ella thinks I try too hard to please my grandmother.”

“You have good reason to.”

“Ella doesn’t know that.”

“How can she not? She knows you live with Nonnie. She knows Nonnie raised you.”

“She doesn’t know that I ran away. With the exception of a very few people, no one does.”

Addy knew. Just like Mark knew things people she’d known for years had never heard. It meant something.

Maybe they just felt free with each other because they knew they’d be moving on soon and never see each other again.

“Ella thinks that a lot of the choices I make are due to Nonnie, when, in fact, they’re choices I’d make regardless.”

“Such as?”

“Putting work before pleasure.”

“That’s kind of a given, isn’t it?”

“She always thought I worked too much.”

“Did you?”

“Maybe. But we needed the money.”

“What else?”

He shrugged. “Just lifestyle choices. She likes to walk a little more on the wild side than I do.”

“Partying, you mean?”

“Just being irresponsible.”

She was glad he’d come knocking. Hearing his voice again was good.

“What does Nonnie think you should do about Ella?”