CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It rained off and on for the rest of the day and into the evening. I could hear my grandparents puttering around the house, doors opening and shutting softly, words spoken too low to make out.

I curled up in my blankets and stared through the window at the gray sky, the raindrops on the glass making funny shadows on my comforter.

I felt awful. I couldn’t help myself. Now that I’d dumped everything on my grandmother, I was consumed with guilt. Partly for hurting her, but also partly because I’d begun to doubt my mother. What if my grandparents weren’t the only ones to blame? What if she’d been hardheaded and hard-hearted, too? I knew it was possible, because I’d barely recognized myself down in that basement.

And what did it matter, anyway? Mom’s fight with them was most definitely over now. Had it been worth it to her? Did she know her parents had come to her funeral? Did she know I was with them now? Did she approve?

I wished so badly I could talk to her, that I could ask her these things.

Under the covers, I shut my eyes and pressed my palms together, waiting for words, but it was like something inside me was afraid to approach my mom, even in prayer. Every time I got close to thinking a direct thought to her, my brain backed away, my heart closed down, my words failed me. Talking to her this way meant she was dead, and I couldn’t go there.

My door opened and the light switched on, making me wince and blink. My grandfather stood in the doorway, which surprised me. Usually it was my grandmother who came to my room. He’d never once come in.

“Grandma went to bed for the night, ” he said evenly. “She was upset and had a headache. So if you want dinner, you’re gonna have to make it yourself. Unless you want peanut butter and jelly. I can make that much.”

“No, thanks, I’m not hungry, ” I told the streaks of rain on the window. But after he left, leaving the door open behind him, I found that I was actually starving.

It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to enter the kitchen, where I knew he would be. But there was something about my grandfather that I didn’t mind so much. Maybe it was the cards, but I almost felt a sort of connection with him, even if I didn’t want to admit it. There was something about him that seemed trustworthy. It felt like it had been so long since I’d had someone to trust.

I wasn’t surprised to see him at the kitchen table, playing solitaire. And losing, as usual.

“Three of clubs on two up top, ” I muttered as I walked by. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him pick up the card and move it, while I searched through the cabinets until I found a box of macaroni and cheese. I flipped it over to look at the directions, even though I pretty much had them memorized. It had been so long since I’d gotten to do something as mundane as make myself macaroni and cheese. It felt good, like a routine revisited. I put a pan of water on the stove and turned it on, then leaned against the kitchen counter, unsure of what else to do. “There’s a jack there, ” I said.

My grandfather stared at his cards, his hands hovering above them. I stepped forward and pointed.

“Right there.”

He moved the cards.

“Why do you keep playing that game? ” I asked. “You always miss the cards.”

“Oh, ” he said, pulling three cards out of the deck in his hand and flipping over the last one, “I suppose I think it’s keeping me mentally agile.” He glanced up, winked at me. “Imagine how many I’d miss if I didn’t play.”

I couldn’t help giggling. “You’d miss none. Because you wouldn’t be playing.”

“Huh, ” he said, acting as if he were pondering. “I guess I wouldn’t, would I? Or maybe I’d miss them all. Care to join me? We can play Spit.”

I grinned. Spit was all about speed. No one had ever beaten me at Spit. Once, I’d even made Marin cry during a game of Spit, it was such a slaughter. “Deal me in.”

The water began to boil behind me and I poured in the pasta and gave it a quick stir, then slid into the chair across from my grandfather as he counted out twenty-six cards for each of us.

“Quite a storm we had this afternoon, wasn’t it? ” he said absently as he dealt.

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t ready yet to confess to him that I felt guilty for how I’d lost it down there. For how I’d attacked my grandmother.

“You know, we get pretty intense storms around here all summer long. Break off our tomato plants, blow the barbecue grill to the other side of the porch. One time we had hail so big it busted out the skylights.”

I picked up my cards. What was he getting at?

He gathered his cards and leveled his gaze at me. He didn’t look angry, but he did look serious. “We’ve never once had a tornado here. In all my sixty-two years, not one.”

I understood what he was getting at—that I needed to let go of my fears because the chances of ever being in another tornado were so slim. The devastation in Elizabeth was unexpected for a reason—because tornadoes as huge as ours almost never happen. It was a freak accident, losing my family. That fact didn’t make it suck any less, but the chances that it would happen again were almost zero. And I couldn’t keep living my life expecting tragedy around every corner.

“You said you learned how to play in the service, ” I said, trying to change the subject. “Were you ever in a war? ”

“It’s a long story, ” he said. “But yes.”

And maybe it was because playing cards relaxed me. Or maybe it was because I felt guilty for what I’d done to my grandmother. Or maybe I had finally gotten so lonely, so sick of my thoughts being my only company. I suddenly wanted to talk.

“I’ve got time, ” I said.

So he proceeded to tell me about the Vietnam War, where he was a young private, barely out of high school, scared for his life. He told me how he’d felt insanely homesick and how every cross word he’d ever uttered to anyone he loved plagued him as he watched young men dying around him every day. He said he’d lie awake at night and replay all the good times and bad that he’d had with his family, hoping that if he died, they’d only remember the good. He’d never had a girlfriend before he got enlisted, and he worried that he’d die over there and never know what it was like to fall in love.

“That was the worst, ” he said. “I would rather have had someone to love and left her too soon than die never knowing love at all.” He let that sink in while we flipped cards over. “But, ” he said with renewed vigor, “turned out I wasn’t supposed to find Patty before I went. I met her the day after I got home, can you believe that? The day after.”

I rooted through my cards, then drew a nine that I needed and laid it down. “Why didn’t you talk to my mom again? I mean… after she split up with Clay.”

My grandfather drew a card and studied it. “I wish we had” was all he said.

There was a sizzling sound as the pot of water boiled over. I jumped up to stir it and turn the flame down, absently setting my cards on the edge of the table. They fell off with a whisper, spreading themselves across the linoleum floor. I calmed the overflowing pot, then went down to my knees to pick up the cards, which had fanned underneath a side table.

That’s when I noticed it for the first time—a porcelain kitten tucked away on a low shelf. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, forgetting about the cards as I stood up.

It was a glossy orange-and-white tabby with a number three on its chest, pawing at a purple butterfly.

I held it out to my grandfather, feeling like someone had stolen my breath. “Where did you get this? ” I asked.

He frowned at it over his glasses in the same maddeningly nonchalant way he did everything. “That? Oh, I think it belonged to Christine. Her mother bought her one for her birthday every year. Christine loved cats. She treasured that collection. She left the whole thing behind.” He took the kitten out of my hand and looked it over. “Your grandma packed them all up and put them away. All except this one. She keeps it out because it was Chrissy’s favorite.” He set the statue on the table between us. My eyes felt riveted to it as pieces of my life snapped into place. “You’d better tend to that pot, ” he said. “It’s fixing to boil over again.”

I walked over and took the pot off the stove, then searched until I found a colander and drained the pasta, stirred in the cheese and butter and milk. But I did these things on autopilot. In my mind, all I could see was a padded manila envelope, one each year, sitting on our old kitchen table back in Elizabeth.

“It’s another kitten, I’ll bet! ” I could hear myself say excitedly, a birthday girl waiting for cake and presents.

I could see the sour look on my mother’s face as she watched me tear open the envelope year after year. I’d always assumed she’d looked so sour because they had come from Clay. I’d always assumed that was why Marin never got one.

But how could Mom tell me? How could she tell me they were from the grandparents she’d raised me to believe were so mean? How could she admit that they weren’t absent after all, but were reaching out to me in the only way they knew how?

On second thought… how couldn’t she tell me these things? How could she be so stubborn? How could she be the cruel one?

Because she’d never in a million years thought I’d find out, that was how. She’d never have guessed that one day I would be playing Spit with her father at the kitchen table she’d grown up eating on. Whatever grudge match had occurred between them, she’d never thought I’d learn about it.

I took a bowl out of the cabinet and spooned in some macaroni.

“You got any extra? I’m not really in the mood for peanut butter and jelly, ” my grandfather said.

I glanced over to find that he had picked up my spilled cards and dealt.

“Cheater. I didn’t see you deal those, ” I said, reaching up to pull down a second bowl.

He spread his palms over his chest, making a show of innocence. “Cheater? I’m an innocent old man, ” he said.

“Uh-huh, ” I said, carrying the bowls to the table and setting one in front of him. “Redeal, old man.”

He swept the cards together and shuffled, chuckling, as I blew into my bowl to cool it off, keeping one eye on the kitten the whole time. I’d treated these people horribly. I’d refused to speak to them, refused to be pleasant. I’d said awful things to my grandmother, and her only response had been to tell me she loved me. My grandfather had invited me to play with him. They understood, even when I was being unfair and selfish and ugly.

They’d acted like… family. Like they were offering a place to belong. I just had to take it.

My grandfather started laying cards out on the table again. “As if I need to cheat, ” he blustered, “against a girl with purple hair.”