Page 9 of Grumpy

Kelly hurried down the hallway, but just as she reached the other two women, the younger one took off. “Hey, wait!” Kelly called after her, but she didn’t pause. She was fast, too—faster than Kelly had a hope of catching up to her. Cursing her lack of speed, Kelly rounded on Margery. “Who was that? Why was she crying? What did you say to her?”

Margery’s sweet smile was back. The one that Kelly very much wanted to slap off the older woman’s face. It was so fake that it might as well have been a clown mask with makeup. “Oh, nothing, dear. Did you hear? My Jesse woke up this morning and squeezed my hand. It was a good thing I was alone in the room, or he might have been too overwhelmed.”

Kelly’s jaw twitched. Did the woman not hear herself? “I want to know who that woman was. Is she related to Grumpy?”

Margery tsked her tongue at the road name. “Jesse really doesn’t like that name. If you knew him at all, you’d know that.”

Kelly didn’t budge when Margery made to move past. “Who was she?”

Margery looked around, like she didn’t want to cause a scene in the hallway. Kelly’s eyes narrowed as her suspicions rose. Margery was not shy in front of audiences. In fact, the louder she was, the happier she seemed to be. The shy act was no more real than that smile. “Look, Kelly, you seem like a sweet woman. Truly. I don’t know what sort of relationship you’re hoping to have with my Jesse, but you need to understand what it is you’re getting yourself into with him.”

Kelly’s back stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I love my son, but he is very much like his father.” Margery’s face fell, and Kelly got a tingling feeling at the base of her skull. For the first time, she wondered if this was the true Margery. The cranky, bitter woman was the facade that protected the brittle, lonely woman beneath.

To Kelly’s knowledge, Grumpy never spoke about his father. She knew nothing about him, even though Kelly had poured her heart out to Grumpy on the anniversary of her own father’s death. Still, Kelly had gotten to know Margery over the past week and a half. It was hard to trust this sad persona.

“I don’t know what that means either.”

Margery glanced up from her study of the floor. “That makes sense. He wouldn’t confide that to you when it might hint at his own transgressions.”

Kelly was beyond confused, but she still picked up on the backhanded jab Margery had just handed her. Even if this sadness was real, it didn’t stop this woman’s cruelty. Or maybe it was too much of a habit. “What transgressions?”

“I love my son,” Margery repeated. “I want nothing but the best for him. But,” she added pointedly, “he’s unable to remain faithful to a woman. Monogamy was not in his father’s blood either.”

Kelly literally just stared up at the older woman in complete bafflement. “I’m sorry—what?” Had she really just said what Kelly thought she’d said? That Grumpy was a serial adulterer?

Margery, though, just nodded. Maybe if she’d added tears, Kelly wouldn’t be tempted to believe her, but there was something in her gaze, something sincere, that made Kelly pause. “Did he tell you about his ex-wife?”

Kelly swallowed hard. “He said he was divorced, happened before he came to Mount Grove.”

“Did he say why they got divorced?”

Kelly shook her head. She wasn’t really listening to this…was she?

“He cheated on her,” Margery confessed in a low voice. “Numerous times. She had evidence, though I never saw it. I didn’t want to. Didn’t need to. It was the same story as it was with his ex-fiancée.”

Fiancée? As in a different woman than his ex-wife?

“Jesse’s father cheated on me, and I always forgave him. Always. He had the same lines, the same lies, every time. That it meant nothing, that he’d never do it again…and I’d believe him, until the next time. Finally, he decided that playing house wasn’t a good image for him anymore, and he left us. Jesse wasn’t even born yet.” Margery shook her head. “I thought Jesse was different. I thought I’d raised him to be kind to women, but he’s too much like his father. Sleeping around in high school and in the Army with those barrack sluts was one thing, but his fiancée? His wife?” Margery’s expression turned disappointed, an expression Kelly knew well from her own mother. “I love Jesse, but he has his faults, and I don’t want you to experience them. He’s my son, I have to love him. But there’s still time for you. I see the way you look at him. There’s no ring on your finger or cut on your back. You can walk away, and never have to know what it’s like to have your heart broken by my son.”

Kelly’s mouth hung open. She truly had no idea what to say. Grumpy? A cheater? But what would be the point of the lie? Kelly could easily find out what happened with the fiancée and the wife. Not that she would go prying into his past, but she could. Grumpy had told her he’d been married while in the Army.

But Margery was right about one thing: Kelly didn’t have to be here. She wasn’t Grumpy’s girlfriend, ol’ lady, or wife. She could leave. Was that Margery’s plan, though? Maybe she’d lied. Maybe this whole thing was a lie to get Kelly to leave. But to what end? Grumpy would get out of the hospital eventually. It might take time, but he’d be up and back to his life in several months. He’d be right back in the diner, and maybe, just maybe, he’d want to pick up where the universe had rudely interrupted them. Margery wasn’t staying. She had her own life she was going to have to return to. So what was the point of the lie if it was a lie at all?

“You’re making that up,” Kelly defended Grumpy through a shaky voice. “Grumpy is a good man.”

“The best man,” Margery agreed. “I am not saying this because I believe otherwise, Kelly. I am saying this because I love my son. Because I know the sort of man he is. He’s good and he’s loyal and he’s a fighter…but he also loves women. All women. He’ll never be faithful to you. If that’s something you can live with, then that’s your choice. But if you choose to walk away, then you’re a stronger woman than me, because I couldn’t. I just want you to be aware, because she,” Margery waved down the hall where the crying woman had left, “won’t be the last.”

Kelly’s head turned towards the young woman who had left, though she was long gone and no longer in Kelly’s sight. “Wait, are you saying she and Grumpy were…”

“I don’t know the extent of their relationship and I don’t want to know,” Margery stipulated. “But I do know that she claims they were sleeping together when the accident happened.”

Kelly frowned, her perplexed mind taking Margery’s words too literally. “Wait, she was in the bar when⁠—”

“No, no,” Margery waved off Kelly’s claim. “I’m assuming before that day. As I said, I don’t want to know. Probably one of those hook ups you young people do with your phones.”

Kelly did not think Margery had a clear understanding what a “hook up” was if she thought it was done with cell phones.