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“Really?”
“I know what you’re thinking. She’d be too old to still be working, right? But she’s young for a grandmother. She had my mom when she was only fifteen years old.”
Mary’s eyebrows nearly shoot off her forehead. “Wow.”
“She’s an amazing woman. She kept her baby and lived at home for a few years, learning to cook family recipes from her mother. Then she started her own business.”
“And your grandfather?”
“Not in the picture,” I say. “I know who he was, somewhat.”
“Who was he?”
I hesitate. But I’ve told her this much already, no reason to stop now. “He was a thirty-year-old businessman traveling through the city.”
Her jaw drops.
“It wasn’t rape. Well, legally it was, but my grandmother was okay with it. She told him she was nineteen.”
“Did he know he had a daughter from her?”
“Nope. He was in and out of her life pretty quickly, and she had no way to find him. Not even a last name.”
Mary shakes her head. “My God, what a story.”
It is. Though I haven’t thought about it in a while. Anyone who meets my grandmother would never think she had such a difficult past.
“And your parents?” Mary asks.
“They’re still in Glasgow. I doubt my father will ever leave Scotland again. He agreed to move over to the States when my mother got pregnant with me. She wanted to raise me here. Then, when I decided to go to school in Scotland after I graduated high school, the entire family moved back.”
“So you’re an only child?”
“Guilty.”
Her face falls into something akin to pity. “Was it lonely growing up?”
I swallow the bite of pizza I’m chewing. “Not at all. When your grandmother runs a Creole restaurant—one of the most popular in the city—there’s always someone around to talk to.”
“So you spent a lot of time with her there?” Mary takes a drink.
“I practically lived there. My father was always off on business, doing something or another, and my mother accompanied him a lot, which left me in Mémé’s care.”
“May may?”
I wipe my lips with my napkin. “Creole French. It’s like calling your grandmother Nana.”
“You speak French, then?”
“Somewhat. Do you?”
She blushes. “I’m afraid not. I remember a little bit of high school Spanish, but that’s about it.”
“That’s a shame. French is a beautiful language. The language of love, mo leannan.”
Her cheeks redden further.
I’m not sure why I keep calling her that. I’ve never called anyone mo leannan. I’ve never looked for love, not in the way most people do. Keira and I were together for five years in Glasgow. We were in the lifestyle there, at an exclusive club, but then she decided she wanted more than I could give her.
