Page 12 of Bad Intentions

“Why Burnville?” I ask.

She shrugs, all serious again, though still swinging her hips to the music. “Why not?”

“But, I mean, you must’ve picked this place for something, right? Not random?”

“An opportunity came up, and voila!”

This sounds like she might have some baggage, though it can’t possibly be as bad as mine. I can call my being in Burnville an “opportunity,” though that would be wrong. It’s an emergency, really. A screwup, sort of. An unlucky chain of events, to sum it up.

My phone lights up with a text message. I want to ignore it. It’s probably one of my buddies partying it up in the city who decided to touch base, reminding me what I’m missing. Or it could be Grandma, having another episode, like when she fell two weeks ago and hurt her ankle and texted me because she couldn’t get up. Mind you, she never asks for help.

My head buzzing with tequila, I tap my foot to the music. Rika wipes the bar counter as she ducks her head to the harsh notes of the tuba.

My phone dings again.

Reluctantly, I pick it up, and my buzz goes out the window.

Unknown: Hello again.

Unknown: We still need to talk.

8

JOSIE

It’s past midnight when I leave the bar and drive slowly through town. Grandma’s neighborhood is eerily quiet and dark except for one house with the lights on—Mrs. Snickett’s. She’s a night owl. A smoker, a drinker, curses like a sailor—she’s the opposite of my grandma, and I can’t even picture them being friends back in the day.

Grandma’s house is dark except for the light in the kitchen.

As always, I creep in. I’m in my mid-twenties, and still, I feel like a high schooler who’s done something wrong and is about to be scolded by a parent.

She should be sleeping. Except she’s not. As soon as I walk in the kitchen and take off my shoes, she walks in, her braided gray hair in place like it hasn’t touched the pillow. Nightgown. Fluffy socks. An empty glass in her hand. Grandma can hear ants walking, I swear.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she says softly as she refills her glass with the water from the fridge dispenser.

“Hey, Grams. Why are you up?”

I toss my car keys and purse onto the counter by the door—no need to creep around anymore.

“Can’t sleep,” she says, pulling out a chair and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

Knowing Grandma, that’s an invitation to talk. I can’t shake off the feeling that she’s trying to gauge what state of drunkenness I’m in. They say parenting never stops, no matter how old your children are. I still feel like I did back in high school when I got drunk for the first time and made my best effort to look sober, slurring, “Grams, I’m soooo tired,” like I had a chance to cover up my drunkenness with a silly excuse.

I stiffen under Grandma’s observant gaze, though it’s not judgmental like it used to be. She believes she's peering into my soul or something. Old people do that. They think because they've lived for decades, they know better. Doesn't matter if they haven't traveled farther than a fifty-mile radius from their homes in their entire lives.

“I was at Carrigan’s,” I say. “Nothing exciting.”

She looks down, scratches at the surface of the table with her fingers, all five of them, then lays her palm flat and does the same with her whole hand. I’ve noticed that peculiar thing about her—using her entire palm to feel textures, as if her fingers are slowly losing sensitivity. Her movements are slow and careful, too. It might be age, or cancer, though every time I ask if she needs help, she brushes me away with her usual, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. When you grow older, you do all the same things as before, just slower.”

But I worry. Constantly. She’s lived on her own since I moved out, yet now that I know her condition, I get nervous about everything she does outside the house, especially driving. I try to do the grocery shopping, but she still drives almost every day, doing who knows what.

“I’m not a child, Josie. I have arms and legs,” she tells me. But she also has this thing eating her from the inside.

I bring her food from the diner daily, but often, she only pecks at it. She’s lost weight, but that’s not what scares me the most. It’s the subtle change in her eyes, the softness that’s jarring, because that was the last thing anyone would ever say about my grandmother—that she’s soft.

She asks me about work, but it’s all the same. When I run into a problem at the diner, I do research, talk to the staff, figure out the paperwork on my own instead of calling Grandma. I’m trying to prove to her that I can handle anything, and she doesn’t have to worry. I don’t want her to worry. She’s done enough of that raising me, watching my every move, all my friends, where I went, what I was up to on any given day.

I know it was because of Mom and what happened. And I told her so many times, “I’m not her.” Except, apparently, what I did back in Pittsburgh proves that I’m just like her. Grandma never said it, not even once. But others in this town do. I know they trash-talk behind my back.