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“I want to take Jamie off your hands.” Mama Al leans toward me, keeping her voice low despite our distance from the rest of the group.
“You what?” Again, I heard her, but I’m having trouble believing the statement.
“I want to offer him a home.” She pushes, staring straight at me, her tone completely serious.
“Why?” My initial reaction is defensive. “Do you think I’m a bad influence?”
That gets a chuckle from her. “Bad influence? The exact opposite. You’ve shown him how generous a man can be.” She leans forward to squeeze my knee. “But you’re young. And busy. And you may not talk about it, but I know you’re juggling a lot of things. I, on the other hand, have all the time in the world for some surrogate mothering.”
Mama Al has always been supportive and loving. But she’s also transient. Hard to pin down. And ever since the first night Jamie crashed on Dash’s old bed, I’ve started to grow protective toward him.
“He’s still in high school. You can’t move him across the country because you get the urge to…feel the Seattle rain or whatever.” Shit, that sounded harsh. Almost like resentment.
But that can’t be right. I love my grandmother. I don’t get mad at her.
Still, she’s relocated for less.
“I bought a place.”
“A house?”
She nods.
“Where?”
“Here. In New Orleans.”
Mama Al has never owned property. Anywhere.
“I don’t understand.” The grandmother that flitted in and out of my childhood memories was not the type of woman to put down roots. As far as I know, she’s never owned a house in her life. Not even when she was raising my dad.
The colorful woman sips her drink, reclining back in her chair to tilt her chin and gaze up at the night sky. “I was a free spirit.”
“You still are.”
“Yes, but I’ve decided on a different way of living. I had it in my mind I needed to be roaming in order to be free. But I don’t. Not every day. Or even every week or every month. I can stand still and be free. And Cole…” She clears her throat, and I realize my grandma, a brick house of a woman, is fighting tears. “My sweet grandbaby. I should have stood still for you.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. We both know it’s not. You know I love you—”
“I know. I’ve always known.”
“But you should have seen. I should have shown you.”
Shit, now I’m the one fighting a thickness in my throat.
“I’m going to show you now, and hope it’s not too late,” Mama Al continues, reaching out to cup my cheek in her hand. “And I’m going to help this young man if he’ll let me. I still have some mothering left in me, and I think he could use a warm home to come back to every day.”
“That’s a lot to do for a stranger.”
“He doesn’t seem so much like a stranger to me. For one, that magnificent woman you’ve fallen in love with cares for the boy. But more importantly, I see a lot of you in him.”
Is Jamie like me? In some ways, it seems he is. Only, when I was his age, I at least had a house and one parent who loved me no matter what.
“Whatever he wants. I don’t mind him here,” I say. That’s not completely true. I can tell Summer feels uncomfortable having sex with Jamie just one room over. When she stops my hands, I don’t push her. But hell, I miss sinking into her as she sighs happily in my ear.
“Let’s talk to him. I have plenty of space at my new house. Got one with a second bedroom. Figured I’d have visitors.” Mama Al makes friends wherever she goes. One reason she’d probably turn out to be a better homemaker for a teenaged boy than I would.
