Page 50 of A Night to Remember

“Kayla Johnson,” Kayla introduces herself as Bello leaps into the air to lick her face.

“I’m Trudy,” Grandma replies, grinning from ear to ear. “Come in, all of you.”

I place an encouraging hand on Kayla’s back and gently urge her through the door ahead of me as Bello bursts past both of us and jumps on the couch. My mother would have a stroke if a muddy dog rolled all over her upholstery, but Grandma doesn’t bat an eye. Instead she watches shrewdly as Kayla draws closer to the family photos lining the entryway.

“Is this you?” she asks, turning to me with a smile. She’s pointing to a picture of a dark-haired little boy in a Cub Scout uniform.

“No, that’s Adam. I had lighter hair as a kid… there, that’s one of me. And here’s one of me and Adam. See the difference?”

“Uh-huh,” she says. She’s still smiling, but Grandma and I both noticed how her eyes had dimmed at the mention of Adam’s name.

“I take it you know Gabriel’s brother?” Grandma asks, moving next to her to examine the pictures too.

“A little,” Kayla replies carefully, her voice tense.

“I love this one,” Grandma says, pointing to a picture of her holding a tiny newborn me, with four-year-old Adam scowling on the couch next to us. “See, it looks like Adam is glaring at Gabe, right?” Kayla nods. “But actually he hated it when anyone besides him held the baby. He thought we were all hopelessly incompetent.” She smiles at me. I’ve heard these stories before, of course: how toddler Adam would admonish all the grown-ups to support my head; how he insisted on sleeping in the same room as me; how he would run to our mother to alert her whenever I cried, as if she couldn’t hear me herself.

Kayla takes all this in with a polite smile, laughing at the appropriate times. Then she glances at me in a questioning sort of way.

I shrug my shoulders and grin at her. “Yeah, he always hated it when anyone else beat me up, too. He would rather do it himself.”

“Gabriel,” my grandmother says in a warning tone. I chuckle.

We begin loading floral arrangements into the car. Grandma’s outdone herself: the dried sprays of blazing star and goldenrod will add a much-needed touch of class to the Hungry Hearts decor. As Kayla catches up to me with an armful of flowers, she asks in a low voice, “Where’s your grandfather?”

“He died a few years ago,” I respond quietly. “Heart attack.”

“I can hear you!” Grandma shouts from the porch. “You can ask me anything you like, dear!” she tells Kayla.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to pry?—”

“It’s fine,” she says, sitting down on the porch steps in spite of the cold. Kayla and I stand a few feet away in the front yard, waiting to hear what she has to say. For a few minutes she doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around her knees and looks off in the direction of cattle lowing in the distance.

“We were once like you,” she says finally. “Just a couple of kids who barely knew how to talk to each other. When he proposed to me, I was surprised. I remember thinking, if I say no, then everything will stay the same. At the time I was working as a teacher in a little town about an hour from here. I liked my life. But then I thought, if I say yes, everything will change, and wouldn’t that be exciting?” She glances at the two of us with a smile. I can see Kayla smile back, tentatively, a question on her lips.

“Best decision I ever made,” Grandma supplies, “though he never gave me a moment’s peace.” She laughs, then she heads back into the house to fetch the rest of the flowers.

“I’m sorry about your grandfather,”Kayla says on the drive back to Kentwood.

“Thanks,” I reply. “You would’ve liked him, too. He was a big bear of a man, always teasing Grandma. She acted like it drove her crazy, but really she loved it.” I smile at the memory of her smacking him with oven mitts or a rolled-up issue ofSouthern Living, like a feisty kitten going after a placid St. Bernard.

“It must have been awful for her when he died,” Kayla says, staring down at her gloved fingers twisting in her lap.

“It was,” I admit.

“See, that’s the thing,” Kayla continues, not looking at me. “You love someone, and then they just… leave. Whether they do it by choice or not, it’s all the same.”

“No, it’s not,” I shoot back, glancing over at her.

“So what’s the point?” she presses on, as if she hasn’t heard me. “What’s the point of all that heartbreak? If you’re just going to end up alone, why not stay alone in the first place?”

“Because!” I protest articulately, adrenaline starting to pulse through me. “Because there are lots of wonderful things that happen in the meantime! ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost’ and all that. Weren’t you an English major?”

I feel angry. Scared. It sounds like she wants toactively fightfalling in love. Like maybe what’s really standing between us is not my family or her goals or another guy, but some stupid fear of loss. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Is she trying to ruin both our lives?

I grip the steering wheel, trying to steady my breath enough to talk, when she abruptly changes the subject.

“What were you talking to Allison about the other day in front of the café?”

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