Page 17 of Windward Hearts

“I will brag if I want to,” Miriam said stubbornly. “It’s in the Grandmother’s Law. I am allowed to brag whenever and to whomever I like. And if you try to challenge me, I am legally obliged to brag even harder. Don’t test me, Hope Landers. I still have a video of your ballet recital when you were seven, and I will happily show people how good you were at your arabesques.”

Hope was driving, which was the only reason she didn’t put her hands over her face.

“Oh my gosh,” she said. “You realize that if you do that, I will enter a state of mortification so profound that I will hide in my room forever and you will have to bring me my meals through a hole in the door?”

Miriam rubbed her hands together like she was a villain in a movie. “Now you see my secret plan for keeping you forever!”

Both women laughed as Hope pulled into the parking lot for Riverstone Kitchen. The days had been getting warmer with enough confidence that it seemed like the last wintery squalls were finally done for the year, and even the chilly rains of early spring were beginning to morph into the bright greenery of the warmer season. Hope had taken to opening the windows in Miriam’s house every morning when she got up, and the fresh air seemed to be hastening her grandmother’s recovery, something that made Hope feel much more cheerful.

It was good to focus on her grandmother, since Hope didn’t have any idea about where she was heading with her own life. But that was a problem for another day.

And agreeing to go to the restaurant really did seem to make Miriam very happy.

“Oh, I’m just so excited,” she said, rubbing her hands together gleefully. “For me as well as for you. I have been stuck home feeling under the weather for so long that I haven’t eaten out in an age, and the food here is just divine. You’re going to love it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Hope said vaguely, then startled when she realized Miriam was staring at her. “Sorry.”

“What’s on your mind, buttercup?” her grandmother asked, and the nickname took Hope straight back to childhood.

And, just like when she’d been a kid, she wasn’t able to hide anything from her grandmother for long.

“Well, I didn’t tell you earlier, but it’s possible that the grocery store wasn’t the first time I met Jared,” she said sheepishly. “It’s possible that he rescued me from being completely turned around when I was first coming to visit you. I couldn’t figure out which house was yours, and I was dragging my suitcases, and he came to my rescue.” Hope stuck out her tongue at her own past foolishness. “And it turned out that your house was about twenty feet away from me. So it was the tiniest bit embarrassing.”

Miriam didn’t look as though she was suffering from secondhand embarrassment, however. She looked utterly charmed.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, her hands clasped to her cheeks. “That’s like something out of a movie.”

“No,” Hope said at once, raising a finger to her grandmother. “No ideas.”

“I’m not getting any ideas,” Miriam protested, and it was so obviously a lie that Hope only arched an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. I will immediately stop getting ideas, even though I am a renowned matchmaker in this town.”

Hope rolled her eyes, but she trusted her grandmother not to intervene… or at least to do so as little as possible. Miriam might be an unrepentant romantic, but she respected people’s boundaries.

They went into the restaurant, but found the place hopping, which meant that Hope’s nerves were for nothing; she didn’t have any exchange with Jared beyond a quick wave through the window that went from the kitchen into the main dining area.

This was a little disappointing. Hope only admitted it deep, deep down, but it was.

The food, however, was far from disappointing.

Hope ordered a steak salad, which came out with perfectly seared steak sliced over a dish of mixed greens that leaned heavily toward sharp, peppery arugula. The lightly pickled red onions had clearly been made in-house, and they provided a lovely counterpart to the rich steak and the crumbly blue cheese that was scattered about the plate. The vinaigrette dressing was perfectly light, making each bite an explosion of flavor in her mouth.

Miriam ordered a quiche Lorraine with pastry so fluffy that it looked practically ready to take flight. The smell of the bacon wafted over to Hope and it was so promising that she made a mental vow to come back and try the dish before she left town. Miriam’s lunch came with a side salad made with the same crunchy, bright arugula that made up so much of Hope’s salad.

They tucked into the food eagerly, but soon after they’d begun, Hope noticed that her grandmother’s vigor, both for the food and for conversation, began to wane. She looked a little paler than Hope might have liked, as well.

“You know,” Hope said quietly, so nobody could overhear. “My lunch will taste just as good if we take it home. Maybe even better. You know how salad sometimes mixes together just right in transit.”

Miriam shot her a grateful look.

“I suppose I’m not all that subtle, am I?” she asked.

Hope laughed a little. Miriam Landers was a lot of things, most of them wonderful, but nobody had ever called her subtle.

“I admit that I might have overdone it a little,” she said, folding her napkin in her lap. “Would you be terribly disappointed if we took the rest of this home?”

“Not at all,” Hope promised her grandmother.

There was a brief scuffle in which they each tried to beat the other out to pay the bill faster, which Miriam won because she informed the waiter, who was thirty if he was a day, “I have your mother’s phone number and I’m not afraid to use it, young man!”