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To her dismay, Lucas looked so much like the young high school boy she used to secretly stalk and admire. Wearing a heavily distressed T-shirt and threadbare jeans. Not like the commercially distressed clothes the parents of the entitled kids in Mia’s school paid a premium for, but organically so. Threadbare from years of wear and tear and normal wash cycles.
To Birdie’s surprise, Mia’s head popped out of Lucas’s passenger door. Her feet hit the ground and she turned to grab two cans of paint, while Lucas pulled a ladder from the back of his truck bed, and Grant carried a pile of boards.
Bernadette grumbled, shaking her head back and forth. “Mmm…mmm...mmm, how many times do I have to tell them boys, I do not accept charity.”
Birdie suppressed a chuckle as the two men were obviously uninterested in their foster mother’s approval, seeing how they were unraveling drop cloths and hauling various-sized ladders, setting them beside one another on the ground.
Bernadette pulled a sweater from the back of her chair, despite it being summer in the South, and marched out the door.
Birdie followed, not wanting to miss the commotion, or Lucas.
She watched as Bernadette did her best to feign indignation. “What do you two think you’re doing? We have discussed this.”
The derelict brothers kept working as Mia smiled wide at Birdie giving her a quick finger wave. “Hey, Mom. Hey, Miss Bernadette.” She stopped in front of the elderly woman. “Um, Luke said I should apologize for bending the truth the other night about who I was… or wasn’t. You know what I mean. I’m sorry.”
Birdie rolled her eyes at her daughter’s gross misrepresentation of her flat-out lying.
Bernadette dipped her head. “Apology accepted.”
Mia continued, “I guess since Grant is my uncle of sorts, that kinda makes you my grandma. Can I call you Grandma?”
Dark brown eyes teared up as she covered her mouth with one hand as if to stem the emotion.
Mia, mistaking her response for something else, said, “What? Too soon? I can always call you Miss Bernadette, you know, for now. Until we get used to this new… thingy,” she said, waving her arms between the three of them. “I’m calling Dad, Luke. I wanted to call him Lukey, like Mom used to, but he didn’t like that idea.”
Birdie caught a hint of a grin from Lucas as he opened a pack of paint rollers and brushes. Grant appeared equally affected, doing that gesture men do when they remove their hat, scratch their head, and then reposition it on their head to disguise a smile.
Bernadette, overwhelmed with emotion, obvious to everyone with the exception of Mia, nodded. “Being called Grandma would be fine.”
Mia wasn’t done with her full-frontal, heart-pelting attack, saying, pragmatically, “Luke said that family takes care of one another, and since you’re his mom and you’re my grandma and everything, we should make this place worthy of the person living inside of it.”
Oh, wow.
Talk about Oscar-worthy pandering.
Well done, Mia.
There was no doubt in Birdie’s mind this diatribe was scripted and rehearsed on the way over. The instigator and author, no doubt, Mia’s bio-dad. Rhetoric mixed with diplomacy had always been his strong suit.
Except with her.
Regardless, she couldn’t help but be a little impressed and touched at the effort to do something kind for a fanatically self-reliant, stubborn woman.
“Well then,” Bernadette said, wiping her eyes with the bottom of her gingham apron dating back to the eighties. “I reckon I better start fixing y’all a decent lunch.”
Bernadette turned to the door, as if walking on a cloud, as Birdie’s eyes caught Lucas’s alongside a knowing smirk. Silently communicating to one another as to what just went down.
He then turned to Mia with an unrepentant grin and high-fived her. Causing Birdie’s heart to grow to the point where she had to rub at her chest at the father-daughter warmth.
They were connecting, albeit through collusion, but still.
Grant grunted, while repositioning some boards on his shoulder. “And that’s why I’m not in politics. It’s easier to whip out the handcuffs and tell the perp what their rights are than cajoling them into the squad car. Hey, Birdie.”
She sensed a bit of reticence in his greeting, alongside innuendo.
“Hey, Grant.”
“Mia has her father’s way with people.”
