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I shivered and pulled out my keys. “Let’s go inside.”
***
“I don’t want to do this,” Bud muttered as he walked up my grandmother’s front path with me four hours later.
“Me, neither,” I admitted. “I’ve been putting it off for four days now.”
“I really, really don’t want to see her,” Bud said. “I feel like it’s wrong being here without Mom.”
It was.
I didn’t think we’d ever been here by ourselves.
My mother was incredibly close to her mother, so every time we came out, it was with her at our side.
“You get the funeral all squared away?” Bud asked, trying to distract himself from what we were about to walk into.
“Yes,” I admitted as I took the first step up onto my grandmother’s front porch. “Tomorrow at nine.”
He nodded once, then took a deep breath.
I opened the front door and walked inside without knocking.
Taking my first step into the house, my eyes automatically went to my grandmother’s chair, and I felt my heart stall in my chest.
Not because my grandmother was crying. But because my grandmother was laughing. Uproariously.
“And then she,” she wiped her eyes, “called and told me what she did.”
All eyes turned to us as we walked inside the room.
“What Mom did?” Bud asked curiously.
That was when Castiel stood up from the chair my grandfather had seated him in and recalled the story my grandmother had just been reciting.
“Your grandmother was telling me about the time that your mother was trying out your brother’s Airsoft gun,” he explained.
That was when Bud started laughing his ass off.
I looked over at him, then at my…Castiel…then back at Bud again.
“Ummm,” I said carefully. “Am I missing something?”
Bud wiped tears of mirth that were rolling down his face.
Castiel grinned and continued his story.
“Apparently, your brother taught her how to load it before he left for boot camp,” he explained. “And one day, she was trying to shoot the cat with it because it was eating the wires of the television. And instead of hitting the cat, she hit the television itself.”
My mouth dropped open.
“That ping in the television?” I gasped.
Bud started laughing all over again, bending over to breathe when he couldn’t seem to draw enough oxygen into his lungs.
“She sent me a letter in basic training.” He stood up and once again wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands. “She said that she only pumped it once, that way she wouldn’t hurt him. But when she went to shoot the cat, your dad started to come in from the bedroom. She jumped and shot the TV instead.”
The irony in the entire situation was that my mother had lit my brother up about two weeks before he left because he’d thrown his Wii controller at the television and broken it. So my father had to replace it twice in about a month’s time.
I turned to my brother, practically tearing my gaze away from Castiel’s soft one, and stared at him. “You know that she blamed that on you, right?”
Bud grinned. “Well, technically, I told her to say that. Although, I meant about shooting at the cat. I was talking to her when she was complaining about the cat eating the wires. I told her what to do and how to work the Airsoft gun, but she had to hang up before she actually shot him so she could use two hands. I didn’t hear about the TV’s demise until I read her letter.”
I just shook my head in bemusement.
Then sobered.
“Bud, come over here and give me a freakin’ kiss already,” my grandmother demanded.
Bud dutifully followed directions, walking up to my grandmother and bending down over her.
Then he dropped his weight completely down onto her and smothered her with his body as he peppered her face with kisses.
“Ughhhhh!” My grandmother wheezed. “You’ve gotten big!”
I felt my heart press uncomfortably against my ribs.
“You okay?” I heard Castiel ask from beside me.
I turned to find him standing at my side, his outstretched arm resting against the beam of wood that I was still standing under in the entranceway.
“He used to do that with my mom, too,” I admitted. “Lay on them. Bud doesn’t know boundaries.”
Castiel’s eyes went to Bud.
“Looks like they enjoy it, though,” he admitted.
I pressed into Castiel’s side as I said, “They do.”
He dropped his arm from the wood above my head and wrapped it around me instead.
“I thought you said you were going to lunch?” I teased, pressing my face down a little harder on his shoulder to get his attention.
“I was,” he admitted. “Here.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
“Y’all two come sit down,” my grandmother ordered. “And then I’ll get you all a plate of chicken and dumplin’s.”
I closed my eyes as emotions tore through my chest.
My mother made the best food ever.
No joke, it was so good that our family from all around used to drive an hour just to eat at her place while she was in town. If she’d been alive right now, there’d be no less than five family members, cousins and or brothers, that would be in her kitchen begging for food right that instant.
