“So we definitely love Grandma Betsy.”
“Definitely,” she smiles. Heaving a deep breath, she blows it out slowly. “You know what, Lance? You’re not a bad guy.”
“I’ve been telling you this.”
An easy little song hums through the speakers. She closes her eyes.
Her body sinks into the seat as the crinkle in her forehead disappears. I want to ask her another question, to hear her voice again, but I don’t because seeing her like this is new. And I like it.
I also like the look of her breasts in that red sweater.
As we drive through the night, I imagine what life would be like without my family. Even when my brothers and Blaire make me crazy, which is often, I appreciate them. We’re a tribe, along with Peck and his brother Vincent and our Nana. We’d be nothing without each other.
Imagining no Sunday dinners or church services or Friday nights at the bar with Peck getting tossed by Machlan—what would I do with my time? I take a peek at Mariah and wonder if that’s why she works a lot. She has nothing else to do. No one to hang out with, reminisce with, or enjoy a meal with.
Or bake with.
The exit to Linton approaches, the turnoff lit with a bright yellow light. I look at it, at Mariah, and plow forward.
“Hey,” she says, opening her eyes. “That’s the exit.”
“I know. I have something I need to do.”
Rubbing my forehead, I know a quick exit I can take a half mile up the road and I know I should take it. I should turn this car around and head into town and get her out of my car. Stop the madness.
Squirming in her seat, she sits upright. “Can’t you drop me off first? Or take me to Goodman’s and I’ll walk from there?”
“Relax,” I instruct.
“I don’t want to relax.”
“Clearly.” Biting my lip, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, I skip the second, and the last, exit into town. “Don’t laugh.”
“I promise nothing.” She folds her arms over her ample chest. “Where are we going?”
“I have to go by my Nana’s.”
“You’re kidding me?” she balks. “You have to go to your grandma’s at eight o’clock on a Saturday night?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Reasons.”
She flops back on the seat again with a huff. “You really can’t take me home?”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I say with a simple shrug.
“You sure sound real sorry.”
My laugh is the last sound either of us make until my car pulls into Nana’s driveway a few minutes later. Parking behind her crossover vehicle, which she bought last year because it holds more casseroles for her church supper club than the sedan she had, I cut the engine.
“Two things you need to know about Nana before we go in,” I say as seriously as I can. It’s almost impossible not to laugh at the soberness in Mariah’s face. “First, don’t say anything bad about Elvis.”
“Got it.” She runs a hand through her long, dark locks. With every movement, the smell of her shampoo—something rich and flowery—almost kills me.
“Second,” I say, pointing at her, “call her Nana.”
“What’s her name?”
Opening my door, I climb out. “I’m not telling you. You have to call her Nana.”
She rustles around behind me then smacks the car door shut. Before I know it, she’s at my side with wild eyes. “Just tell me her name. Or I can call her Mrs. Gibson, I guess.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I say. My hands go up in defense as we climb the wooden steps Peck built a few summers ago. They creak with our weight, adding to the music from the crickets under the porch.
The house is small, built in the early nineteen-twenties. Granddad kept it in perfect condition, then Dad took over. Now my brothers and Peck and I come by and do tasks for her when she needs them done. If we don’t get here quick enough, she calls a service guy and that makes us nuts.
“This place is so cute,” she notes as we look across the back yard. The grass is freshly cut, probably by Walker. The remnants of Nana’s garden lie dormant by the shed. “It’s like a book, all quaint and lovely.”
“Quaint and lovely?” I balk, turning towards the house. “Nice vocabulary you have there, Ms. Malarkey.”
She doesn’t bother with a comeback. Instead, she files in behind me as I head for the sliding glass door into the kitchen.
“I can stay in the car,” she whispers roughly. “I don’t have to go in.”
“Do you want her coming out here to get you?”
She taps me on the shoulder. “She doesn’t know I’m here. Why would she come out?”
“Why are you whispering?” I whisper back. We’re eye-to-eye, our faces close enough that I could kiss her in a half a second. Her irises dilate as I lick my lips. “Relax,” I say turning back to the house before I do something stupid.