Page 57 of The Usual Family Mayhem

Gram snorted. “We’ve given her days and now this.”

I’d never wanted to crawl under the couch and hide as much as I did right now. Unfortunately, adults weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. “I was planning to tell you.”

Gram’s eyebrow lifted. “When?”

“Why are you involving Jackson?” Celia asked at the same time.

Gram barely let Celia finish. “That wasn’t a way to make this man jealous, was it? I can’t imagine you doing something deliberately hurtful.”

I needed roller skates to keep up with these two and this conversation. We’d only ventured a few sentences in, and I’d already lost control of the topic. What were they talking about and why did it include Jackson?

Brock’s unwanted visit ran through most of my reserves, but I couldn’t show weakness here. The ladies would be all over that. “I think we need to back up.”

“Kissing one man in the gazebo one day. Hiding under the tree with another the next.” Celia shook her head. “This behavior isn’t like you.”

Panicked sentences rolled through my head. She did not just say “kissing.” Please have her not have mentioned kissing. No kissing. “Did you—”

“Balancing two men is dangerous, not to mention exhausting and unnecessary.” This time Gram sighed. Not a quiet, subtle sigh. An everyone-listen-to-me sigh. “I know you think you can handle anything, but—”

“I wonder where she gets that from,” Celia mumbled under her breath.

“I don’t blame her for being skeptical or feeling confused. Men are a nuisance.” Gram never skipped an opportunity to recite her general view on men and slipped it in here. “I can only think of a few likable ones other than Jackson.”

Round and round they went. Jackson’s name kept popping up and not in a way that made sense. Most of the bickering happened between the ladies. They left me out of it, which was a relief but only a temporary one. The temptation to sneak out of the room pulled pretty hard but I stayed put. Mostly because these two would hunt me down if I took one step in any direction.

Just as they entered a new back-and-forth, I clapped. The move was strategic and a little dangerous. I’d clapped in the car exactly one time as a kid. Gram immediately pulled over and delivered a lecture in her serious Gram voice about why that was never going to happen again.

They viewed clapping as disrespectful. They also insisted the noise gave them a headache. The unforgivable sin? Clapping in church. Gram exploded every time it happened.Do you remember ten years ago when Cynthia clapped after the children’s choir sang “Silent Night”?More than one of our weekly FaceTime calls included a church clapping rant.

I had their attention. Good, because they sure had mine. “How do you know about the kiss in the gazebo?”

Celia shrugged. “We saw you from the house.”

We’d entered nightmare territory. “You did...what?”

“We had to go upstairs and move some furniture around to get a better look.” Gram acted out the movements while shetalked. “The trees blocked the view but when we sat on the bed and ducked down, we could see you two.”

They... but we were...oh my God.

Celia shook her head. “Poor Jackson.”

Wait a second. “Hey, I’m not that bad at kissing.”

He hadn’t complained. Not to me. If he’d given them a critique he’d better be damn good at running because I would go after him.

“The other man is the issue.” Gram treated us to another dismissive snort.

There’s no way I’d heard them correctly. “Back up. You two were sneaking around, watching me with Jackson?”

Gram gasped. Actually gasped. As if this conversation wasn’t dramatic enough. “I do not sneak around in my own house.”

“Well...” Celia winced. “We did hide behind the curtain when she looked up at the window.”

I could almost see them shushing each other as they moved through the house, jockeying for a better view. Running here and there, slinking around, peeking out windows like a nosy crime-fighting duo.

“Jackson and I have shared one kiss.” Well, two, but precise details would not help here. They’d only make the explanation cloudier. “You don’t approve? Is that the problem?”

There was an offensive answer here and they better not say it.

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