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“Shit,” he mutters. “Do I even dare ask what she said?”
I take a deep breath and wipe my eyes. “It was fine, up until he died. Then she told me to go. Get my ass back home. I wanted to stay in touch. I was old enough to do that, and she wouldn’t have it. Told me to git gone, so I did.”
“Damn her.”
“I still reached out now and then. Sent cards. Sent letters saying I’d like to come see her. When I was twenty, I got two cards in a row marked ‘return to sender,’ and I panicked, thinking something had happened to her. Nope. She was alive and fine and living in the same house. She just didn’t want to hear from me anymore.”
“Screw you, Maeve,” he says into the darkness. “I understand that she thought she was doing what’s best, but really, screw her.” He sits up and turns toward me. “You know she didn’t mean it, right?”
When I don’t answer, he sighs. “Of course you don’t know it. How could you? Fourteen years old and you travel across the country to be with your dying dad, and your grandmother sends you packing the moment he’s gone.”
I say nothing.
He stretches his legs. “After Mom took me to Tampa, I didn’t come back to Fort Exile until they bought this place for me. I got to know Maeve a lot better then. To see her as a person, adult to adult.”
He pauses. “Well, no, she never did see me as an adult, but that’s another story. Point is that I’d come around, deliver her groceries, do odd jobs, and you know why she liked me? Not because I helped out. Because I’d been your friend. She had a soft spot for me, so she tolerated the help. And I tolerated her bullshit. She told me once that it wasn’t my fault I went to prison and that I was right to avoid alcohol because those things were bred in my bone. And she wasn’t referring to my dad’s side.”
I sigh. “Sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t say it.” He meets my gaze. “She loved you, CeCe. Loved you more than anyone else, after your daddy. Maybe even more than him. For Maeve, the best way to show her love was to chase you away. Make sure you stayed in the big city, leading a big-city life with big-city people. She knew you sent her money.”
When I blink, he says, “You did, right? Deposited it into her account?”
“Not a lot. Just enough that she wouldn’t realize it.”
“Maeve always knew exactly how much should be there. She told me someone was putting money into her account, and all the bank would say was that it came from out of state, so she knew it was you. She said the bank wouldn’t let her send it back, so she was stuck with it. That’s how she put it. Stuck with it. She grumbled about how she didn’t need no charity, but you should have seen her eyes shine every time she told that story. And she told it all the time, making sure everyone knew her grandbaby from up North was sneaking money into her bank account.”
I pick at the label on my beer bottle. “And when the imposter Celeste showed up, Gran thought she was the one who did all that.”
I hear the hurt in my voice, and it chafes. It’s like giving an anonymous donation... and then finding out someone else took credit. Sure, you weren’t claiming credit yourself, but somehow, the theft saps the gesture of its joy. I did this thing for my gran, despite how she’d treated me, and Celeste got to bask in Maeve’s pride and what passed for her love.
When Tom doesn’t reply, I say, “Sorry, that’s petty and churlish. The point is that Gran appreciated the money.”
“It’s not petty. It’s not churlish. If I’m quiet, I’m trying to figure out how to broach this topic without losing my temper.”
He cracks open another soda. “First, there are a few things you need to know about the situation, to explain why Maeve thought she was you. And selfishly, to defend the fact that even I accepted she was you.” He looks at me. “That last part is really tough.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not but...” He inhales. “Your gran was in rough shape. Really rough. She should have been in a home, but we both know she’d have swallowed a bottle of pills before she allowed that. Cataracts meant she wasn’t seeing well. Untreated diabetes meant she wasn’t thinking clearly. A year ago, we had a really bad falling out over you.”
“Me?”
He nods. “I could see she was on a downhill slide, and I wanted her to contact you. At first, she said she didn’t know how, which was true, but when I offered to start looking, she refused to give me even the barest details. She accused me of wanting to track you down for my own sake. And that’s where things got ugly. She didn’t want me in contact with you. I’m an ex-con mechanic, and one of the best things about you escaping this life is that it meant you’d never end up with a guy like me.”
“She said that?”
“Yep.”
“Goddamn her. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugs. “Part of me says she’s not to blame—it was mental decline. But it’s like when people talk shit after they’ve been drinking. It doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s just stuff they wouldn’t normally say out loud. I said yes, I would like to see you again—to catch up with an old friend. I don’t exactly need help meeting women. Which led to her opinions on the type of women guys like me attract and that I should stick with them because you deserved better.”
“Damn her.” I look at him. “I’m sorry. She was a million miles out of line. I hope you knew that.”
“Yeah, I did, but I’m also sensitive about it. Especially when it comes to you. All those afternoons you and I spent talking about how we’d get out of places like Fort Exile, and where did I end up?”
“It’s not that simple.”
