Page 13 of Lovingly Restored

Is she honestly telling me I can’t stay in my own relative’s home? Not bloody likely. I drop my bag and grab onto the back of a solid wood dining chair, scraping it obnoxiously across the tile. Plopping myself down, I swing my feet up on the table with a thud like I’m marking my territory. If Mummo saw this, I’d get a wooden spoon whipped across my hard ass. Hopefully, Ashlyn doesn’t believe in corporal punishment. Her eyes widen at my woolly socks and the left big toe that’s peek-a-booing out of a hole.

Her nostrils flare. “Any idea how long you’ll be staying?”

“Nope.” I interlace my fingers behind my head like I’m settling in for a pleasant afternoon or thirty.

Her eyes travel from my threadbare socks along the length of my legs, pausing somewhere around belt buckle height, if I’m not mistaken. I raise an eyebrow at her, knowing the slim-cut denim doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. She tugs at the neck of her apron, and I bite my bottom lip to contain a grin. Yeah, I knew I noticed her looking me over in my truck.

“Fine. I guess you can stay here for a while,” she concedes.

If she thinks she has any say here, she’s wrong.

I bow my head to her in mock gratitude. “How gracious of you. It’s lucky we already know each other.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she mutters.

“Ah, it’s not gonna bethatbad, Ash.”

She pins me with a look, and I’m not sure if it’s because she knows that’s a bald-faced lie or if she doesn’t appreciate the nickname. She knows this situation has nightmarish potential. AndIknow she hasn’t forgotten for one solitary second that I never called. Ashlyn plucks the steel wool from the sink and resumes her regime with renewed vigour. I look her over in that apron and catalogue the defiant look in her chestnut eyes.

I didn’t call. But I really, really should have.

Chapter four

Isaac

I linger in the doorway of Mummo’s room, leaning against the dark wood frame and watching her in her armchair. The room smells of the woody florals of her Estee Lauder perfume. Of hugs and comfort and all things grandma. Pappa and I purchased that scent for her every Christmas. At the department store’s fragrance counter, he’d give me an encouraging shove, making me ask the salesperson. He always let me keep the change. We wrapped the same blue box, and every year she’d act surprised. I’ve kept the tradition since he passed. How many more of those glass bottles will I get to buy? Since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis last year, it’s been hard to push those kinds of thoughts from my mind.

I follow Mummo’s line of sight out the window, wondering if she’s imagining the back garden as it used to be, because the state of it now isn’t anything to gaze at. Noticing me, her warm smile extends all the way to her clouded blue eyes. A robin’s egg kerchief covers much of her thick grey hair, and her gold wedding ring shines on her hand as she fusses with the scarf.

“Are you coming in or are you just going to stand there, Little One?”

She’s called me that since Iwasa little one, but it stuck after I’d surpassed her height and then Pappa’s.

I cross the room and kneel so we’re eye to eye. “Hi, Mummo.”

After I kiss her soft cheek, I sit on the foot of her firm twin bed.

“So, I was thinking I could stay here for a bit.”

She raises one fair eyebrow. “Bored of the fancy condo?”

I brought her over to see it when I first moved in. She thought the elevator was too fast and refused to go on the glass-railed patio.

“What do you even do way up there in the sky? Look out the window?”

I smirk, not pointing out that’s the activity she’d been partaking in a minute before. “Something like that. So, is that okay? Can I stay?”

I imagine a walk of shame out the front door, Ashlyn laughing at me being caught in my lies.

“How do you plan on earning your keep?”

I swallow. My keep? Iplannedto bust my ass trying to start a business from scratch.

Her eyes sparkle, “I have an idea. I’ll write you a list.”

“A list?” I scratch my jaw.

“Things are falling apart around here. Your grandfather is slacking.”

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