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“Oh, pretty girl, I’ve missed you so much,” Olivia coos to Violet. “Have you been good? Have you missed me?”
Violet gurgles little responses and grins a huge, gummy smile. It’s the single most precious thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“She’s been very good,” Grams announces. “She’s so well-behaved. Nothing like her father.”
I click my tongue and roll my eyes. “I was perfectly well-behaved as a baby, thank you.”
“Oh, you’d cry over every little thing.” Grams grins and thwacks me on the shoulder. “He sure was a screamer, my little Reese’s Cups. Had a set of lungs on him! I always thought he’d be a singer with the way his pipes worked, but I suppose all that gumption getting turned into athletic ability makes just as much sense, doesn’t it?”
Olivia chuckles. “It sure does. I bet he was a handful.”
“I was not!”
“He was so,” she insists. She rests a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Come on. Let me show you a thing or two.”
41
OLIVIA
I hadn't expected that seeing Violet again would make me so emotional. I’m on the verge of a meltdown, but I’m doing my damndest to keep it together. As much as I want to, I don’t cry or make a scene. I don't even beg Reese to let us take Violet home after this. I know that we can't right now, not with everything going on.
But my God, do I want to.
I make myself take a deep breath and hold it to a count of ten. Then, instead of having a total crisis in front of Reese and his grandmother, I sit on the couch with Violet clutched in my arms. Reese takes a place beside me, one hand caressing my lower back.
His grandmother disappears and then comes back with an armful of photo albums. Her grin goes from ear to ear. “I’ve got goodies!” she announces.
“Aww, not these, Grams,” he groans. “Anything but these.”
“Oh, your baby pictures a sore spot?” I give him a teasing elbow in the ribs.
“You haven’t seen them yet. You don’t know what’s about to happen.”
“I grew up in a time where taking pictures wasn’t a readily available thing,” his grandmother explains. “So, when disposables became popular, I made sure to document just about everything I possibly could.” She turns her gaze on her grandson. “I don’t see the problem. Reese’s Cup just doesn’t like the fact he had gap teeth right up until he was seventeen?—”
“Grams!”
“I’m just saying! They gave you character.”
“They gave me a complex is what they gave me.” Reese huffs. “You know how much personality you have to cultivate to offset a gap tooth when you’re talking to girls?”
I can’t help but laugh at Reese’s expense. “I dunno… Maybe that was the universe’s way of nerfing you.”
“Nerfing me?”
“Yeah, you know. Like, the universe knew you’d be a heartbreaker and figured it would give you a little handicap to offset that.”
Reese blinks at me. “I feel like you intended that to be a compliment, but my ego can only take so much more damage.”
“Quit your whining. It’s Show & Tell time.” His grandmother cracks open the first album. “I got so many pictures of him when he was first born. His father wasn’t a picture guy, really, but his mother—oh, she treasured every little moment I could snatch.”
The first pages are chock full of Reese’s first moments in this world. He was such a red, angry, wailing baby. His mouth is wide open with a scream in damn near every single photo.
“You were so mad!” I giggle out. Page after page shows Reese in various states of “angry ball of gremlin.” The only times he isn’t wailing is when he’s in his mother’s arms.
I don’t say it out loud, but he looks so much like her. They have the same eyes and, as Reese gets older in his pictures, he shares her face. He’s just got a little more chisel to him than she did. It’s easy to see why he was so attached to her. She features in every facet of his early life.
His father, on the other hand, does not. Even when Reese’s mother noticeably disappears from the pictures, Papa Dalton doesn’t step in to make up the difference. Then, when Reese becomes a teenager, his father disappears, too.
