Page 253 of Worth the Trip

“What?”

“Look.”

I followed her finger.

The pale-blue housedress caught my attention first, then the woman wearing it.

“Nana?”

She stood just inside the doorway with one hand curled around the strap of her purse, taking in the crowded shop as though she needed a moment to reconcile the place in front of her with the thing I had been talking about for months.

Then her eyes found me.

“There go my baby.”

Everything in me softened.

I crossed the floor fast enough for Nyla to laugh behind me. Nana barely had time to open her arms before I folded into them, inhaling the familiar mixture of powder, perfume, and whatever lotion she had been loyal to longer than I had been alive.

“You came.”

“Course I came. You thought you was gon’ open a whole other business and I’d sit home waiting on somebody to put pictures on that little Facebook?”

I laughed and leaned back. “You could’ve told me.”

“And miss this face doing exactly what it’s doing now? Absolutely not.”

Nyla joined us and kissed Nana’s cheek.

“There my other baby,” Nana said.

Nyla pressed one hand to her chest. “See how she said other? Four minutes of favoritism documented in real time.”

I stared at her. “You have been alive almost forty years and are still litigating four minutes.”

“You started it.”

“I was born first. I had no control over the proceedings.”

“You’ve been acting like you chaired the meeting ever since.”

Nana waved one hand between us. “Both of y’all hush before I remember why I used to separate you.”

I laughed and slipped my arm through hers. “Come see everything.”

She let me guide her through the shop, stopping twice because people recognized enough resemblance between the three of us to decide conversation was required. Nana handled both encounters like she had personally financed the building. By the time we reached Scoops & Stories, she had accepted congratulations from strangers, told one woman where I got my eyes, and informed another that Nyla had always been the loud one.

Nyla disputed none of it.

Nana’s steps slowed as we entered the reading section.

Children sat beneath the windows with books open across their laps. A mother read aloud to two little girls in matching braids. One boy lay on his stomach with his shoes swinging behind him while he studied a graphic novel, his cup of chocolate ice cream forgotten on the table beside him.

Nana became still.

“You brought the books too.”

“Of course.”