Authors: Elizabeth Bass

Wherever Grace Is Needed (18 page)

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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They zigzagged around the neighborhood, peering around each street and yard and asking anyone they saw if they’d seen an old man walking a fuzzy basset hound. No one had.

“We’re on the wrong track,” Grace said after ten minutes of this.

“Maybe I should go home and wait while you drive out to the airport,” Sam suggested.

She shook her head. “You take the car, and I’ll take the bus to the airport.”

“But—”

Grace wasn’t willing to argue the point. “And keep looping by the house regularly to see if he’s shown up there.”

They switched sides and Sam dropped her off at a bus stop just as a bus was pulling up.

“We’ll find him, Grace,” he assured her.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.

She boarded the bus and rode it to the capitol building, where she had to get on the airport shuttle. Luck was with her. It was waiting right there.

She bit back the urge to tell the driver to step on it and flopped on a seat near the front of the empty bus, which started its journey just as her phone rang. It was Peggy.

“Grace, we found him. He’s with us.”

Grace nearly collapsed in relief. In that moment, the animosity she’d felt toward Peggy all these months disappeared. At least she’d come through in the pinch. “Thank you so much!”

“We’re driving back to the house now.”

As she was hanging up, Grace saw a message on her phone she hadn’t noticed. It was a text from Ben that had come a few hours before. She had accidentally left her phone on vibrate until she’d turned on the ringer, hoping for news about her dad. Ben had probably texted to let her know his plane was delayed.

She decided to call Sam first and tell him the good news.

“Thank God,” he said. “I’m going to go home and root through the liquor cabinet now.”

“Leave a little for me,” she said.

After she’d hung up, she looked at her phone again. As she scrolled down Ben’s text, her forehead furrowed in confusion.

Not on plane. I’m so sorry.

She pressed speed dial. On the other end, the phone rang and rang. She hung up, stewed for ten seconds, then dialed again. When there was no answer, she sank back in frustration and watched suburban Austin whiz by through the window for a block. The third time she called, Ben picked up.

“Okay, Grace,” he said, as if they were already midargument, “I’m sorry. Okay?”

“What happened?”

“I have to go to Seattle. In fact, I’m halfway there now.”

Halfway to
Seattle?
“What’s in Seattle?”

“Amber. She’s all alone up there during the holiday, and swamped with school stuff besides.”

Grace would have laughed if she hadn’t been so irritated. “Are you going there to help her study?”

“She needs me, Grace.”

“Why?”

His long sigh crackled over the line. “Nobody knows this yet but me. Amber’s pregnant.”

The response threw Grace. And, frankly, she couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. She and Amber used to be good friends, but they’d barely communicated at all since Grace left Portland. She hadn’t even e-mailed her the big news. “Why would she tell you this?”

“Because.” When he realized
because
wasn’t enough, Ben confessed, “Because I’m the father.”

“What?”

“I knew you were going to react this way.”

“What way?”

“Mad.”

But she hadn’t been mad. She’d just been shocked. Flabbergasted.

Now
she got mad. “For God’s sake!”

“You left, Grace. You’ve been gone forever.”

“For
five months.”
She sputtered wordlessly before asking, “What happened? Only a month ago you were begging me to go back to Portland. Thanksgiving was going to be our big reunion.”

“I know.” He sighed. “The truth is, the thing with Amber happened before.”

“Before you asked me to come back?” she said, her voice finally reaching toward hysteria. “Before we made plans for today?”

“The thing with Amber was nothing,” he said.

“Obviously not!”

“She’d just come down one weekend to get those boxes in our basement,” he explained. “And I was feeling lonely, and so was she, so—”

Grace cut him off. “I get the picture.”

“I thought that was the end of it. Obviously. But now, with the kid . . .” He sighed. “I asked you to come home all summer, Grace.”

“But I didn’t know you meant that if I didn’t come home you would get our mutual friend pregnant!”

The bus driver, a woman, glanced up at her through the rearview mirror.

“You’d been gone so long, Grace,” Ben said. “How was I to know what was going through your mind?”

“By asking me!”

“I did—and you always set dates for returning and then broke them. How could I be sure that
you
weren’t seeing someone down there, like that Ray guy.”

“That’s absurd! How do you even know about him?”

“Because you talk about him and those stupid kids
all the time.
Every time we talked, you mentioned them.”

For some reason, hearing Ben refer to Dominic and Lily as
those stupid kids
made her madder than anything else. “You are crazy and wrong, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t even want to talk to you right now.”

“Fine. You don’t have to talk to me ever, if you don’t want to,” he announced. “I’m moving to Seattle.”

Grace felt as if her heart should have been breaking at the announcement, but her first thought was,
Who’s going to take care of Rigoletto’s?

When she finally hung up the phone, the bus was pulling into the airport. “Do I get a price break for taking a round trip without getting off?” she said to the driver.

Eyeing her through the mirror, the driver pursed her lips. “Sounds like if the city of Austin doesn’t give you a break today, nobody will.”

T
HE
P
LEASURE OF
H
ER
C
OMPANY

M
aybe she just hadn’t been paying attention, but when she came home from school Wednesday afternoon and saw the Ford Focus in the driveway, Jordan was stunned. She scooted in the front door, heard voices in the kitchen, and flew up the stairs before anyone could see her.

She darted into her room, shut the door behind her, and dove onto the futon lying on the bare floor.
Why didn’t anyone warn me they were coming?
Granny Kate and Pop Pop hadn’t acknowledged her existence since kicking her out of their house. God, this was going to be so awful.

Plus, she’d promised to go to Heather’s for Thanksgiving, which was going to be awkward to explain to her grandparents after they’d driven all this way to visit.

Her door opened and she held her breath until she saw that it was just Dominic. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that Granny Kate and Pop Pop were coming for Thanksgiving?” she asked him. “I just assumed we’d skip it.”

“Skip Thanksgiving?” Dominic’s eyes bugged. “Are you crazy? Why would we do that? Granny Kate brought a little turkey and two pies.”

“I made plans to go to a friend’s house. How am I going to explain? Everybody’ll be so pissed off.”

“Couldn’t you cancel?” Dominic asked. He sank down next to her. “It’ll be awful if you’re not here.”

Those big eyes under that brown mop of his made her reach over and muss his hair. “Aw, Nickel—you’re probably the only person in this whole world who would say that.”

“I’m serious,” he said, ducking away from her hand. “I’ll be really bummed if it’s just me and Lily.”

She sank down onto her elbows, giving him a playful shove with her foot. “You’ll forget about me the second you see a pecan pie.”

“I will not.”

She laughed.

“This really bites!” he said. “It’s our first Thanksgiving without Mom and Nina. And we don’t get to go over to Grace’s house. And now you’re not even going to be here.”

“Why would you want to go to Grace’s for Thanksgiving?”

“Grace and the professor are really nice. And Iago’s there.”

“Okay—spending a holiday with the dog, I can see. But wanting to go to an interminable family dinner with that ’rhoid and her pompous daddy? No, thanks.”

“You don’t even know them,” Dominic argued.

“Thank God.”

To her surprise, he jumped up, angry. “Fine! Go wherever you want to go. You’re going to get in trouble for it, though.”

She watched him stomping away, and laughed. “What did I say to get you in a huff?”

He slammed her door.

“Dominic, don’t be mad!” she called after him.

A second later,
his
door slammed.

She lay back again and weighed her options. She could cancel on Heather, but that would really suck, because she’d probably actually have fun there . . . at least more fun than she was going to have with her own family. But if she didn’t cancel her plans with Heather, she was going to be everybody’s anger sponge here at home. But then if she did cancel and stay home, she would. probably be in a pissed-off mood all day and end up cheesing everybody off anyway.

As usual, she couldn’t win.

Lily poked her head in.

“No, don’t bother to knock,” Jordan told her. “It’s just my room.”

“What did you say to make Dominic so angry?” Lily asked.

“
Nothing.
He’s just being a little emotion monkey today.”

“You must have said
something.”

“Do you think I’d tell you anyway? You’d just run to your lame little diary and scribble it all down.”

“I only write down thought-provoking things,” Lily said.

God, it was so hard to believe that they sprang from the same loins. There had to have been a mistake—a hospital switch or something. Maybe somewhere in the world Mr. and Mrs. Bug-Up-Their-Butts were wondering how they had lucked into such a cool daughter instead of the four-eyed little priss pants who rightfully should have been theirs.

“So, are you going to tell me or not?” Lily persisted. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.
Dominic’s bent out of joint because I told a friend that I’d go to her house tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“But Granny Kate and Pop Pop are here!”

Jordan rolled her eyes. “Yeah, thanks, figured that out.”

“Dad’s going to be really mad.”

“Why should
he
get upset? He sees me every day. Not that he wants to, of course.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Lily argued. “It’s about decorum. He’ll be mad that you’ve offended Granny Kate and Pop Pop. Especially after last summer.”

Jordan rose to her feet. “Okay, yes, I suck. So before you feel the need to go playing town crier with that bulletin, let me just go tell them myself.”

“There’s no reason to get persnickety,” Lily said.

Could she be any more annoying? “If you keep talking like that your tongue is going to get stuck in permanent geek mode. Repeat after me:
There’s no reason to be pissy.”

“I don’t like pissy,” Lily said. “It’s vulgar. I like persnickety.”

“Fine. Doom yourself to freakdom. I’ve done my best.”

“I’m not a freak!”

Jordan laughed. Lily’s face turned red and she did an about-face and stomped to her room. Another door slammed.

Sighing, Jordan picked up her phone and called Heather. She was still wavering over what to do when her friend picked up.

“Oh, good!” Heather said as soon as she heard her voice. “I’ve been meaning to call you. We’re going to need food. Do you have anything?”

“Um, I guess I could scrounge something.” She felt pulled in the other direction now. “So you’re still expecting me?”

“Of course! You’re going to be the life of the party. Maybe the only life.” When Jordan didn’t even chuckle, Heather asked, “There’s no problem, is there?”

“Not really. It’s just that my grandparents showed up.”

“Good, they’ll be company for your gloomy dad.”

“They’ll add to his gloom, more like.”

Heather sighed. “Well, don’t angst. This year will suck, but by next Thanksgiving your dad will have found somebody else.”

Jordan froze. “What do you mean, ‘somebody else’? Who?”

“Just anybody. Believe me, it won’t be long.”

Jordan tried to laugh. “You don’t know my dad. He and my mom were together forever. Since elementary school! I don’t think he was ever with anybody else. He was devoted to her—still is.”

“God, that’s sad.” Heather let out a long breath. “Still—happens all the time. Think of Paul McCartney. His fantastic vegetarian wife who he was completely devoted to for years and years died, and then lickety-split he married that one-legged model.
Huge
mistake. But the guy couldn’t help himself. Men don’t do lonely.”

For some reason, the whole idea made her furious. “You can’t compare my dad to Paul McCartney! The one good thing about Dad is that he
really
loved my mom.”

Heather backed off. “Chill, okay? Maybe your old man
is
different,” she conceded. “I’m just sayin’, life might be grim now, but just wait till the stepmom shows up.”

Jordan bristled. The idea that some strange woman would sashay into their mom’s house made her physically sick. How could her dad be that fickle?

Suddenly, she laughed. “God! The woman doesn’t exist yet, and already I hate her.”

“Oh, she exists—she just might not have materialized yet. Or maybe she has and you don’t know it.”

Jordan frowned.

“So . . . you think you could bring eats tomorrow?” Heather asked.

“Sure,” Jordan said, absently twisting a strand of hair around a finger. “I’ll find something.”

“Great! And don’t forget—dress scrungy.”

After she hung up, Jordan squared her shoulders and marched down the stairs before she could chicken out. Granny Kate, Pop Pop, and her dad were all sitting around the kitchen table, drinking some of the diet soft drinks that Granny Kate always brought with her. The three of them looked up in surprise when she came in.

“Hi, folks.”

“Well, hello there,” Pop Pop said, amiably enough.

Granny Kate didn’t really greet her, except to ask, “What was all that door slamming upstairs about?”

“Me, of course,” Jordan confessed. “I’ve screwed up again. I promised a friend I’d go over to her house tomorrow and eat lunch with her family, and Dominic and Lily think you’ll feel insulted that I’m abandoning you.”

There was a split second of silence—a catch in the air—and then Granny Kate said, “Of course we won’t be insulted.”

Pop Pop smiled at Jordan. “If you’ve made a promise, you’ve made a promise.”

Her father’s expression remained neutral for a moment as he studied Pop Pop and Granny Kate, then he looked back at Jordan, his lips tweaking into a little smile.

And that’s when she knew. They weren’t angry, or disappointed.

They were
glad.
Relieved.

Relieved that she wouldn’t be there.

“We just want you to have a good holiday,” Granny Kate said.

Her grandparents both beamed dopey grins at her. It was the happiest she’d seen them since the accident.

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed

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