Page 8 of Your Soul to Keep

Slowly, I learned to do the same.

But every so often, a longing for something altogether different crept under my barriers and stole my focus.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Nan fell asleep early now and woke late.

Every night I sat beside her, sometimes lying down on the other side of her bed. She talked about my dad, my mom, and me as she drifted in and out of sleep, but she mostly told stories about my grandfather.

“I never got used to sleeping alone, pet,” she confessed, a soft smile on her thin lips. “Even the nights I was tempted to box his ears, I still slept with my foot on his.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How had she managed to carry on after losing so much?

It terrified me.

When she fell into a deep sleep, I slipped from her room to my own.

From one bed to another.

I climbed up on my bed, stuffed the pillows Nan quilted for me behind my back, and flipped through the offerings on TV.

The presence of that TV seared me to my soul. She bought it when she asked me to come home, trying to make things better for me, when she was the one who was dying.

Other than the new television, my room was much the same. Dove gray walls, dusty rose curtains pulled back to frame the large window overlooking the front yard, a cream and rose quilt on an ornate cherrywood bed, a matching dresser, the nightstand holding an additional housephone, and my vanity with its gold-framed mirror.

The piece de resistance was the delicate chandelier.

My room was an anomaly. Nan had wallpapered the rest of the house within an inch of its life. Despite that, the stained-glass window of the heavy front door complimented the original glass of the windows in the rest of the house. Ornate oakwood doorways, stairways, and trim emitted a sense of permanence.

This house was standing long before Nan and Grampy moved in, it witnessed them raising their family and would outlast them both.

It would outlast me as well.

The fact we are little more than a speck in time depressed and reassured me at once. It would be beyond difficult to screw up so colossally that it would register in the history of the world. We could afford to live without fear.

At least a little.

When the TV failed to distract me, I picked up my latest romance novel. After a few minutes, I tossed that aside as well.

I pulled up my knees, wrapped my arms around my legs, and allowed my mind to drift to Gabe. Seeing him thrilled and devastated me in equal measure.

Was he married?

He didn’t wear a ring, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d never been one to bow to convention.

Several times it crossed my mind to ask Max, but I chickened out. If Gabe had someone special, I didn’t want to know.

Besides, we were ancient history. He made that obvious when he left Susie Q’s after dinner with a casual, all-encompassing, “see you around.”

He didn’t say anything to me specifically.

Nor did he ask for my number.

And he didn’t look back.

I knew because I watched him until he was out of sight.

That was two weeks ago.

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