“Hidey-ho, Miss Maggie-Oh! Come to witness the second virgin birth, have you? Oh, wait a minute. That should probably be the fourth, shouldn’t it?” Grandpa Gordon’s wonderfully expressive and craggy face popped into view before the rest of him—probably because he was leaning forward in his motorized scooter chair like Snoopy in vulture mode, ready and willing to swoop forth on any unsuspecting victim. His chair rolled smoothly toward me, stopping just short. He eyed Marcus up and down. “Hey now. Who’s the hunkarooney?”
I leaned down and looped my arms around his neck in a loose hug, giving his leathery cheek a resounding smack. “Grandpa G, you are incorrigible and up to no good as usual, I see.”
“I’m up to a lotta things your mother doesn’t know about, and that’s just the way I like it, missy.” Grandpa G cackled, slapping his knee hard enough to jar his bones. “But you haven’t said. You’re going to force me to be a rude bugger and ask him myself, and you know how she hates when I do that.”
“Well, I’d hate to be the one to get you in trouble with Mom,” I said, giggling. “Grandpa G, meet Marcus Quinn. Marcus, this is my grandfather. You have to watch him—he’s trouble with a capital T.”
“Hell, honey, I invented the word,” Grandpa G drawled, quite pleased with himself, as he shook Marcus’s proffered hand. He sized Marcus up with a squint, not letting go. “So, what’s the story with you, young feller? You courtin’ my favorite granddaughter?”
I was about to clue him in that it’s not called courting anymore when Marcus nodded, his expression comfortable and open as he looked my granddad square in the eye. “I certainly am, sir.”
It was the strange mix of the casual seriousness of his voice, the absolute unrepentant confirmation that took me aback. Courting . . . was that what he was doing? “Courting” to me implied putting on one’s best clothes and behaviors, operating on the assumption that one had to put one’s best foot forward in order to captivate. Which left all of the less attractive features conveniently hidden away. What was so wrong with truth? It certainly made it easier to remember everything you put out there.
I shook my head. It was only a turn of phrase. I was being too sensitive. Probably because of all the confusion I’d gone through with Tom. Not that Tom had been intentionally trying to mislead me. I didn’t think. Or maybe he was. Maybe that was the trouble all along. A sad lack of truth. Maybe if he’d been able to tell me like it was, we’d have saved ourselves a lot of trouble and heartache along the way. Or maybe if I’d been brave enough to air my own issues. Neither of us had been very . . . open to that, I don’t think.
“I like this one, Maggie my girl,” Grandpa G was telling me with his usual lack of a filter. “How come we are just finding out about him today? And whatever happened to that other feller you were cozying up with?”
Leave it to Grandpa G to spew a pointed question without worrying about offending. I guess when a person gets to a certain age, he figures he doesn’t have a lot of time to waste, so he says whatever’s on his mind. Spits it out. Cuts to the chase. Doesn’t worry about upsetting the applecart, because the bulk of the apples are sad, shriveled little fruits anyway.
The door behind me snicked shut. A chill ran down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the air-conditioning vent I’d been cooling my overheated sensibilities beneath.
“There you are, Patty. Have you met Maggie’s young man yet?”
The look on my mother’s face should have turned me to stone. I was surprised to find myself still drawing breath. “Yes, Dad. I met him outside. In the hall. Just a short moment ago, in fact.” She sat down by my father, who still hadn’t lowered the newspaper. “I was surprised, of course, but I suppose it’s too much to ask these days for one’s own daughter to keep her mother informed of the comings and goings of important people in her life.” She sighed the long-suffering sigh she was famous for, the one that said,
If only I could get my children to listen to me, to see the guiding light of my wisdom, to hear my cautioning words and take heed.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it, Glenn?”
She waited for my father’s response. When it wasn’t forthcoming, she cleared her throat and repeated,
“Isn’t
it, Glenn.” Less of a question, more of a demand.
Still there was no response.
With another long-suffering sigh, she reached out a hand and peeled the widespread newspapers back at the corner. There was my dad, eyes closed behind his glasses, chin down on his chest. No wonder he hadn’t said anything when I walked into the waiting room. For a moment I thought my mother was going to wake him, but at the last minute I saw a gentle smile touch the corner of her mouth and she shook her head. “Silly man. Spending half your nights puttering about that workshop of yours. Is it any wonder you fall asleep sitting up these days?”
When she turned back to me, her tone was noticeably muted. “Your dad is going to need that coffee you brought with you. Grandpa, on the other hand, might be better served with warm milk.”
“Warm milk!” Grandpa G sputtered. “You trying to kill me, woman?”
“Quite the contrary,” Mom countered. “I’m trying to keep you alive to see a few more of your great-grandchildren.” With a meaningful sidelong glance in my direction, she continued. “Maybe
they’ll
be a little bit easier on my nerves.”
Evidently she hadn’t been apprised of Jenna and Courtney’s experiences with their
imaginary
friends ... which of course weren’t imaginary at all, as I had only recently discovered. My little nieces had been chatting with spirits from the Other Side. I wondered what my mother would say if she knew perfect Mel had been keeping secrets from her, too.
Somehow that thought made me feel a little better.
“Say,” I heard Grandpa G exclaim, “that a tattoo I see there?”
I turned my attention back toward Grandpa G, who had wheeled his motorized hoverchair around and had settled into place beside Marcus. He was now poking at Marcus’s bicep, where through the thin white cotton of his button-down, the dark blue outline of the stylized Celtic knot could clearly be seen. Marcus wasn’t some muscle-bound he-hunk, but he had really—
really
—nice muscles where it counted and just enough definition to make any woman under the age of, oh, ninety stop and take notice. The tattoo only added to the mesmerization effect. Greatly.
“Yes, sir, it is,” Marcus answered honestly, unfazed by my grandfather’s bluntness.
“Got one of them myself,” Grandpa G confided. “From my stint in the navy. I know what you’re thinking, a land-locked old farmer like myself, in the navy? Well, that’s exactly why I did it. You only get a chance to be young and foolish once in yer life. A man’s gotta make the most of it.” He began prying at his buttons and pulling his flannel shirt apart, ready to expose heaven only knows what.
My mother sat down beside my father and glared over at the two of them, judgment written all over her face. “Young and foolish sounds about right, but Mama always said that ugly tattoo was from when you were sowing your wild oats all over the county.” I could see her eyes zooming in on Marcus’s sleeve, trying to discern the dark shape beneath.
Grandpa G’s face took on a decidedly impish demeanor. “Well, yeah,
this
one. But if I was to show you the one I got in the navy, those nurses up the way would be calling for security.” And with the shocked horror that parted Mom’s lips, he proudly peeled the flannel back to show Marcus a nondescript anchor, heavily inked, on the loose chicken skin of his shoulder. Ruefully he gazed down at the wrinkled display. “It looked a lot better back then, o’course. Jeebus, getting old is the pits. Used to be solid as a rock. Now the damn thing looks as sad as a schoolgirl trying to fill out her first bra.”
Mom rose to her feet, her shoulders held stiff, and went to the wall of windows to gaze out at the deepening twilight. Though I knew I’d probably regret it, I leaned over and whispered, “So, Gramps. What’s the other tat?”
He leaned in, too, but never bothered to lower his voice. “A little Polynesian girl in a grass skirt. I could make her hula and everything. The Polynesian girl, o‘course. Not yer grandma.” And then he cackled and smacked his knee. “Though it did used to make yer grandma get an itch, too, in her younger days, darned if it didn’t!” And he laughed again, not seeming to mind a bit that my face had just gone crimson and I was furiously blinking away the images that his words had just burned into my mind.
And that was Grandpa G for you. Completely devoid of a PC filter, but somehow you still had to love him for it.
Mom’s shoulders were held stiffer than ever when she turned back from the window. “Really, Dad,” she admonished. “Aren’t you a little old for throwing things out just for shock value?”
Grandpa G shrugged. “At my age, a little shock value might be the only thing keeping the old ticker going that day. You learn not to look down yer nose at it.”
An excuse if I ever heard one. Grandpa G had never been the kind of guy to turn away from a shock-’n-awe approach to life.
Mom apparently agreed with my assessment. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Mrs. Henderson down the street just might disagree. You scared the pants off her the other day, bursting out from behind the sheets she had on the line.”
“If I’d scared the pants off of her, I‘da had another reason for the old ticker to keep goin’,” he quipped saucily. “And I wouldn’t be lookin’ down my nose at that, either.”
Marcus choked, coughed, and had to pound on his chest a couple of times. “Sorry,” he wheezed when he could draw breath again. “Coffee went down the wrong way.”
I didn’t dare catch his eye for fear of sending him into another fit of the choke-backs, but I, for one, was glad that my mom hadn’t noticed that his cup of coffee was still in the carrying tray.
My mother paced over to the door to peer out into the hall. “Greg is still there with her,” she fussed.
“That’s a good thing. Isn’t it?” My brother-in-law, family lawyer extraordinaire Greg Craven, had been known to, shall we say, let Mel handle things at the most crucial of times, so I thought it a valid question.
“Well, of course it is! But he hasn’t come out to let us know how things are going, either.” With nothing to see out the door, she came and sat beside my father with a restless sigh. But I couldn’t help noticing that she’d left the door propped wide open. An attempt to usher in news, ASAP, perhaps?
“Well . . . they’re busy in there, Mom.”
“But couldn’t he do at least that much? How long would it take? A minute, tops?”
Obviously she was delusional. If Greg had stepped one foot out of the labor and delivery room, my mom would have latched onto him like a leech, sucking him dry of all information until he had given his all.
“And where are the girls tonight?” I asked, again attempting to sway my mom’s attention into gentler waters. The well-being of my nieces, Jenna and Courtney, ought to suffice.
“Mel’s friends, Margo and Jane, are watching them,” Mom said vaguely, waving away my concern. She had more important things on her mind.
Ugh. Jane Churchill I could tolerate, though I was far from convinced about the dependability of her avowals of friendship. Margo Dickerson-Craig, emphasis on the hyphen, was quite another story. One with an evil queen who liked to think the whole world revolved around her. Too bad the man in the magic mirror couldn’t grow a pair and tell it like it was. If he had, that particular fairy tale could have had a happier ending.
But (and this was the important part), if the two of them had stepped up to the plate to offer their assistance at such a crucial time, more power to them. Despite our differences, especially with Margo, I would not fault them.
I just wished it could have been me. I love the girls. I do. They are sticky-sweet and wonderful, and I still felt a little guilty that Mel had decided to go the home nurse route for the last months of her problematic pregnancy rather than keep me on as her—okay, somewhat-reluctant-at-the-time, that was my fault—after-hours solution.
Especially after I had discovered the girls’ ...
gifts.
They were going to need an auntie-in-the-know to help guide their way through the murk and confusion of the otherworldly. Heaven knows Mel wasn’t going to be able to help. Honestly? She was about as sensitive as a brick wall. And that was on a good day. Intuition? Mel’s only demonstrated gift toward intuition seemed to be in ferreting out the secrets her friends and frenemies desperately wanted to keep hidden. At that, she was tops.
I was about to ask Mom if perhaps I should consider leaving her to the hospital vigil and heading over to Mel’s to spell Margo and Jane when Mom’s chin jerked up and her gaze darted left and right. She twisted in her chair. “Now where did that man go?”
Chapter 4
That man being, you guessed it, my wily grandfather, who has more tricky maneuvers than Houdini. Somehow he had managed to slip away with neither me nor my mother noticing.
“Marcus, did you see where Grandpa went?”
Marcus, who had been absorbed in trying to read the lips on the muted television mounted high on the wall, snapped to attention. “Your grandfather?” He looked first left, then right, blankly. “Well, he was right here. Um ...”
No help whatsoever. Definitely not going to be scoring brownie points with my mom anytime this evening. She was already at the end of her rope.
“Glenn,” she said, taking the newspaper out of my father’s hands. “Glenn!” She rapped on the wooden arm of the chair.
“A-whuh?” My father snuffled and snorted himself into awareness. “What is it? What’s wrong? Did I fall asleep?”
“You know you did,” Mom accused. “Dad’s gone.”
My dad was still knuckling the sleep out of his eyes from underneath his old-school plastic aviator glasses. The movement knocked the glasses slightly askew, but he didn’t seem to notice. It gave him a goofy appearance, like some absent-minded professor. Well, he
was
a long-time accountant, so maybe that wasn’t far off the mark. “Gone?” he asked, just as blank as Marcus.