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I jerk my thumb toward the parking lot. “I need to catch Evie,” I say to Sarah-Beth.
“Go, go, go,” Sarah-Beth says with a shooing motion. “Don’t let that one get away. She was made for you.”
“Yeah, she kind of was.” I grin. And I follow Evie to the Jeep, where she waits for me to unlock the door.
She gets in and pulls down the visor. “That bitch split my lip,” she says as she appraises her mouth in the mirror.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t make it any easier,” I remind her. I stare at her, but I can’t be angry at her. I just can’t. Everything she did was for my benefit. Well, not the knee to the nose. She could have been a little nicer about that. “Let me see your face.”
She turns to face me, and I grab her chin between my index finger and thumb. She’ll live. It’ll probably swell up and turn purple, and she’ll be picked on for being a thug, but she’ll live. “You’re something else, you know that?” I tell her, my voice quiet.
“She was a bitch. And she was being mean to you.”
I laugh. “She was a big old meanie-head,” I say with a whine.
She rolls her eyes. “Fuck you, Grady,” she says, but there’s no heat in it, no malice.
“I kind of liked seeing you go all Rambo on her ass.” I laugh again.
“Well, my daddy always told me that if I started a fight, I was going to get my ass whooped when I got home. And if I let somebody start a fight with me and then I didn’t finish it, I’d still get my ass whooped when I got home. Either way I get my ass whooped, but at least this way I got a lick in.” She looks supremely satisfied with herself.
I let my eyes roam all over her face. Her features are soft, despite what just happened. I linger so long that she starts to squirm. Then I lean forward and kiss the corner of her mouth. “There,” I say, “I kissed it and made it better.”
Suddenly, she asks, “Did you love her, Grady?” Her voice is strong. She really wants to know.
I shake my head. “I’ve only ever been in love with one woman, Clifford, and it wasn’t Sarah-Beth.”
She stares at me for a blink, and it’s a heady feeling having all of her attention. “Ice cream,” she says. She points down the street, where the ice cream shop is.
I back out and I take her to the local ice cream parlor. We sit in the car to eat our ice cream, but suddenly Junior and Barbara-Claire pull up next us. They have all three kids in the backseat.
Barbara-Claire leans out the window and says, “So I heard you pulled a knife and shivved some unsuspecting woman that made a pass at Grady at the turkey shoot.” She laughs. “I heard she’s knocking on death’s door, getting surgery at the local hospital, because of what you did to her. A lover’s quarrel, right?” She puts her hands together like she’s praying. She lifts her phone up and shows us a picture of that woman’s hair in Evie’s hand, right as she lifted her knee.
Evie looks at me and rolls her eyes. “The grapevine here is shit.”
14
Evie
Grandma glares at me over the top of her reading glasses from where she sits at the kitchen table doing her crossword puzzle. “Give me another word for combatant,” she says.
I think about it for a moment. “Warrior?”
“Nope.” She doesn’t even look up at me.
“Fighter?”
She starts to write, then slides it over to me, pointing. “I think that’s it.” She’s spelled out E-V-E-L-Y-N in the tiny boxes. She grins so big I’m afraid her teeth will fall out.
“Very funny,” I say. I immediately want to roll my eyes, but if I do she’s liable to get after me with the fly swatter. She may be old, but she’s quick.
“I saw the pictures,” she says.
I stand up so I can load the dishwasher. “How did you see those?”
“On the social media apps. I signed up for all of them, since you and Grady keep getting mentioned on them.”
“But how did you know they were on the social media apps to begin with?” Grandma has never been big on using the phone I gave her last Christmas. The only thing she ever wanted to do with it was make calls.
