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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Ooh, look at what just arrived for you, Heidi.”
The following Tuesday, Wave Cruisers’ receptionist carried a box of stunning blood-red tulips into Heidi’s office and set them on the corner of her desk.
Heidi stared impassively at the offering.
She frequently got flowers, including many deliveries from a particular overpriced brand that tacked on a surcharge for allowing their stems to grace the boonies of Eastern North Carolina. She hadn’t yet figured out what it was about her personality that made all her fleeing bicurious suitors think she wanted flowers from them.
If the box was from Carine, Heidi wouldn’t have been surprised.
Something in the redhead’s expression when she’d left Heidi’s house on Saturday afternoon had triggered Heidi’s emotional shutdown reflex. Even if she had allowed a glitter-speck of optimism about the situation to endure, she’d known what was coming.
Feeling uncharacteristically masochistic, Heidi plucked the card off the box when the receptionist departed. She ripped it open and read:
Thank you for checking in on Grandmommy.
Even if you didn’t mean it, her spirits were lifted by your offer.
She hadn’t smiled so much in years.
We should meet.
-Grayson Totteredge
Heidi scowled. “Totteredge? Should I know a Totteredge?”
As she swiveled her rolling chair in small arcs, she swirled the name around in her head. She thought she would have had an immediate sense of familiarity with such an unusual name, but as far as she knew, she hadn’t encountered it.
But she had encountered a T.
“T for Totteredge?”
T was the initial standing in for Fran’s last name on her room door at the senior living apartments. Heidi had passed it during her long-overdue Monday visit with her grandmother. Following the previous week’s birthday excitement, Heidi had wanted to ensure Nana was in good spirits. She’d fully expected her grandmother to recant every word she’d said on her birthday or, at the very least, pretend to not recall any of them.
Before Heidi had even signed the visitor’s log, she’d spotted her grandmother in the rec room. She’d been sitting on her favorite wingback chair. Seated on the matching chair beside it had been a petite woman with faded lilac hair whose focus had been fixed on the flatscreen television.
They’d held hands like best friends.
Of a certain sort.
“You come to bail me out?” Nana had asked. She’d barely looked in Heidi’s direction as her granddaughter approached.
“Maybe I have,” Heidi had joked before sitting and launching into her usual recitation of things happening in her life. She’d eventually meandered onto the subject of possibly moving to a larger home.
Apparently, her grandmother hadn’t been the only one who might have taken that throwaway comment as an invitation during the visit.
“Fran Totteredge. Well, you don’t miss a thing, do you, old lady?”
Heidi tucked the card back into its envelope and, noting the trembling flash of red on her desk phone’s light, picked up the receiver.
“Who sent you flowers?” Tim asked.
“Fran’s grandson. To make a long story short, I must have accidentally suggested I’d have a place for her and Nana when I move.”
“First of all, accidentally?”
“I try to be careful with my words, Tim. You know that.”
