He offered his hand so readily I almost wished I'd warned him she might bite it off. But I hadn't, and she didn't—tiny victories. “Nice to meet you. Katherine has told me a lot.”
A tut left her lips and she rolled her eyes like a bratty teenager. “Whatever Katherine had to say about me is undoubtedly highly unflattering. But I appreciate you wanting me to think otherwise.” Her sights immediately returned to me, which was its own particular kind of surprising. Nobody ever stopped looking at Eamon to look at me. “Katherine. I am just…" She shook her head, still staring, and I realized what she was about to say. "You look exactly like her. Exactly.”
Tears welled in my eyes. If there was an invisible tether between the women in my family, it was pulling on me hard right now. All the years gone, all the regret and resentment, and I still wanted her to love me. I needed it like air and water and my whole life I’d felt as though I didn’t deserve it. “Funny, isn't it?” I laughed quietly, desperate for something to lift me out of that place where I felt unworthy of being my mother’s daughter, of looking like her.
“I had no idea. I think the last photograph I saw of you was from your high school graduation. Lucy showed it to me. And it was taken from a distance. I could see the resemblance then, but not like I see it right now.”
I knew exactly what she was saying because I lived with it every day. The resemblance was uncanny and it had grown stronger with every birthday, as I crept closer to the age my mother had been when she’d died. I’d learned not to think about it too much. Amy knew not to talk about it. Dad didn't even mention it anymore. “Can I sit with you?”
Beverly lunged to move the stack of magazines sitting on the cushion next to my grandmother—all of them true crime. “I’ll leave you three alone,” she said.
I took my spot on the couch and Eamon stood near me, hands behind his back. “So, Amy's getting married,” I said. “To a really nice guy. His name is Luke Mayhew. Comes from a nice family. A big family. They're very much in love.”
“You told me. Over the phone.”
“Right. I did.” I silently begged Eamon for some encouragement or ideas of what to say next, but all he did was momentarily distract me with how dang nice he was to look at. Not helpful. “And as I also said on the phone, Amy would really like to wear something of our mother's on her wedding day. Which makes sense, right?”
“I suppose.”
“That's why I'm here today. The wedding is on Saturday. And I know you said no before, but I was hoping I could convince you to change your mind.”
“So your sister sent you to do her bidding?”
“Actually, no. She has no idea that I'm here. I woke up this morning and thought I should try one more time. Eamon and I just went to the train station and came up.”
“You make it sound so easy. Almost like you could come and visit regularly.” She casually smoothed her pant leg with her hand. The guilt was never laid on directly in my family. It was always merely implied.
“If you had given me any indication at all over the phone that you wanted me to visit, I would've come earlier. You weren't exactly kind to me.” I wanted the necklace, but I wasn't going to sugarcoat her behavior. She'd lashed out at me and I still didn't feel as though it had been deserved.
Grandma cleared her throat. “You caught me off guard, that's all. Just like today. If you'd given me some warning, I could've had coffee waiting for you.”
It took serious willpower not to point out exactly how full of shit she was. “I don't need coffee. I don't even need you to be nice to me, Grandma. I know how you feel about me.”
She pressed her lips together and looked down at her lap again, this time picking at a spot on her pants with her nails. “You're still mad about that day in the hospital.”
“Honestly? I don't have the strength to be mad about it any more. It just makes me sad to think about it. I needed you that day, and you turned your back on me.”
She raised her head and looked me straight in the eye. “What do you say to a ten year old girl who's just lost her mother? Especially when you're blinded with grief and guilt.”
I was stuck on what she'd said. The grief I got. But the guilt? Wasn't that all mine? “Why would you ever feel guilty?”
“I think I know why your mother did what she did. And it wasn't because she'd fallen in love with the wrong guy.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“If she learned that behavior, she learned it from me.”
Now I was even more confused. “Learned what?”
“I did the same thing to her and Lucy. Let them spend time with a man who wasn’t your grandfather. A man I was involved with.”
If ever there had been a moment where I had absolutely no idea what to say, this was it.
“I'm not proud of it,” she continued. “But I did.”
“I had no idea.”
“The situations were different though.” She sounded as if she was forming her defense. “It wasn't the same. I wanted to get caught. Your mother did not. Your mother was torn between two men.”
