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“That’s a hard time for a girl to lose her mother.”
“Yeah,” she agreed and her eyes flashed again. “Part of me wanted her to go, but then afterward I was so bloody lost. I totally shut down. I had to invent a socially palatable personality because I turned into a zombie for a while.”
She paused and he wondered how deep the pain of that abandonment ran.
“Bet you didn’t expect that when you asked about oatmeal,” she said with an empty laugh. She stacked her bowl and spoon on the wooden tray and cast around for other things to tidy.
“Did you ever see her again?” he asked, undaunted.
“All the time. That’s what was so awkward about it. She moved, but she stayed in the same suburb in Bellingham and we had to pretend everything was normal. Our parents treated it like joint custody in a divorce. We spent half the time with her, half the time with him. We knew she was unhappy, but we couldn’t do anything about it. How could we? We didn’t understand it. We still don’t.” She stopped. “Well, I still don’t. Maybe she and Max have reconnected. That’s my brother, Max. We haven’t spoken in a while.” She stared at the fire.
Then she laughed, a sound so void of joy he gritted his teeth.
“All this before 10:00 a.m.!”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. He felt for her but he wanted to know more. Needed to know more. “Why don’t you and Max talk anymore?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed, and dragged her eyes back to his. “It’s like we experienced this traumatic thing together, the dissolution of our family, the dissolution of love, and we couldn’t recover from it. He broke inside, too. And he turned away from me.” She shook her head and stared at the floor. “Now I’m just being dramatic. Lots of families grow apart. It’s not like we’re special. Or were special.”
Grant didn’t buy it. “Your mom disappeared into her pain and your dad couldn’t cope. They both abandoned their kids. So you and your brother abandoned each other, and all hope of connecting with anyone ever again.”
Melinda’s face swiveled back to him, her eyebrows raised.
“Uh, sorry, I don’t know where that came from,” he said with an apologetic laugh, then immediately came clean. “Actually, I do. It’s because I did a heap of therapy after my mom, uh, died in a car crash. So I know some shrink speak. But I shouldn’t have said that to you. I sure as hell don’t know if it’s true.”
Grant watched her turning over his words in her mind. Why had he said “anyone”? Why not just “your family”? Because he wanted her to reawaken and reconnect. He wanted her to recognize that she shut out everyone who could ever possibly hurt her. And I want her to connect—with me.
“Your mom was killed?” Melinda took back the reins.
“Yeah. Car accident,” he said. “Ten years ago. Damn nightmare.” He took a deep breath, surprised that talking about something he’d put so much time into healing could still sting.
“Can I ask what happened?” she asked tentatively. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t get upset about it anymore. The event is upsetting, the loss is awful. But it’s over. It happened. We dealt with it the best we could.” Grant paused. Long version or short version? Definitely short.
“She was driving home from down below and a drunk driver sideswiped her into the guardrail on the way down the grade toward Dillon. Her car flipped and ended up upside down in rush hour traffic. She didn’t have a chance.” He looked away from her. To give her space to process what he had said or to collect himself after sharing his own family tragedy, he wasn’t sure.
“Oh, my God,” Melinda breathed, concern written on her face. “How old were you? How old was she? What did your dad do? Do you have brothers and sisters?” She almost laughed at her urgency. “Sorry. Any one of those questions is fine to answer.”
“I was twenty-eight,” he said. “She was fifty-three.” That part hurt. Why did that part hurt? Because that was too young. The older he got the more he realized how young that was. And she had suffered. There was no need to mention that, though. This conversation was intense enough. “I have a younger brother. His wife just had a baby a month ago, their second. I was at the airport after visiting them, so Paul harassed me into joining this circus.”
“That’s why you were so adamant about me not driving away from here the other night,” she said, her voice small.
“That, and it was freezing, and you were half in shock, and I was already struggling with a horribly guilty conscience.” He caught her eyes. “Still am.”
She looked away. Fair enough. He didn’t know how to deal with it either.
Grant rubbed his shoulder and rolled his neck. “What was the other question? What did my dad do?” He chuckled. “My dad’s got life figured out. He mourned, wholeheartedly. He fully felt his pain. He read a bunch of self-help books on grief and made me read them too. We basically had a damned book club about them. He found a therapist for himself, found one for me, and threatened to pay the guy even if I didn’t go, which he knew I wouldn’t let him do, so I went. What can I say? Blackmail works with me.” He scanned her face. Was this too much for her?
“So now that that’s all out in the open,” he said with a half-smile, “would you like to take a tour of the back deck?”
Her eyes widened. “There’s a back deck?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s Ipe or something equally as bulletproof and expensive. It’s through that wall.” Grant gestured toward the ten-thousand-dollar slider and curtain.
“Ee-what?”
“Ee-pay,” he enunciated the short word. “Ipe. Nothing’s too good for our Paul.”
