Page 22 of A Valiant Prince

Anna’s eyes open so wide, I fear for a moment she’s having some kind of heart attack or stroke.

“Anna?” I ask, leaning forward. She turns to me and touches my face as though seeing me for the first time. And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m fairly certain my heart stops beating for a second.

“Suzy,” I say.

“Eddie?” she replies.

I reach out and touch her face, remembering the first love of my life. How did I not see it? I look her up and down, remembering the gangly, young Anna with the huge eyes that didn’t seem in proportion to her body. She had more freckles back then and her hair was a little darker.

“Oh my!” my grandmother exclaims. “I-it can’t be.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” I breathe as I look at Anna. “My Suzy.”

Anna giggles at the use of her old nickname.

“No one’s called me that for eons,” she says.

“But your brothers still call you Suzy Q,” I point out.

She shrugs and grins. “How were we so blind?” she asks with a laugh.

I shake my head. “It’s crazy…it’s…I don’t know,” I say.

“You look so different, but your eyes, I should have recognized them,” she whispers.

“Same,” I say to her. I pull her into a hug as though greeting a long-lost friend.

“Well, isn’t that something,” my grandmother says as she looks back down at the photo album, gazing upon what I swear is the eleventh naked baby photo of me. “Are you going to ask your other friends in for dinner?” she asks me.

I sigh and rub my head, releasing Anna. My grandmother is as astute as they come. She must think we’re idiots. There’s not a single photo of us together from camp all those years ago, but I talked about Anna, Suzy, until I was blue in the face after coming home each summer.

“Sure, Nana,” I say as I turn and walk outside to find the parked car with Hendrick, Pete, and Lucas sitting inside. I knock on the window, and they roll it down.

“Everything OK?” Pete asks.

“Yes, my grandparents have invited you in,” I say to them.

“What?” Pete replies.

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t know anything. My nana just saw you sitting here and figured out you were with us, so she wants you to come in and eat with us,” I explain.

“Oh, uh, I guess. I mean, if you want us to,” Pete says, looking at Hendrick and Lucas.

“Yeah, sure,” I say as I turn and head back inside. I hold open the door and the three of them file out of the car and trudge up the front porch steps.

“Oh, good, your friends are joining us,” my grandmother says. She stands and introduces herself, and then my grandfather comes in and starts telling war stories. Apparently, Hendrick isn’t opposed to talking about the army with my pops, because he launches into a long story of a mission he was on in Afghanistan. The story merges into dinnertime and pretty soon we’re all sitting around the dining room table being regaled by Hendrick and my pops swapping stories of gunfire and bombs.

By the time Nana pulls out a pie and begins serving us, I’m leaning back in my chair, taking in the most unusual scene at the table where I spent most of my childhood suppers. I breathe in the familiar scent of my grandmother’s cooking and a hint of tobacco smoke from my pops’s pipe that he tries to hide from Nana. Nothing about this room has changed in the last twenty years. The maple wood paneling that is neatly cleaned every week. The old oak table with matching chairs that’s seen more family meals than I can count. The old blue checkered curtains that haven’t been in fashion ever, but that Nana loves, so they remain. The chandelier that came with the house. Even the old paintings that hang on either side of the room are the same ones that have been there since I can remember. The matching oak cupboard that houses the floral china set my grandparents got when they were married, still has a drawing I made in the second grade, stuck against one of the glass panes of the cabinet’s doors. It’s comforting in a way, that this small part of the world has remained unscathed, unchanged.

Even the plates that we eat from are the same ones we had when I was a child. I look up to find my grandmother studying me. I give her a small smile. She taps her nose, and I sigh. When I was a kid, I would always confide in her, no matter what. She could sense something was up the second I walked in the door. She always waited, gave me my space until after dinner when she’d tap her nose and head out to the back porch to sit on her swing. That was my cue to follow her and spill it, as she would say.

She gets up and everyone promptly tells her that they will clear the table.

“Well, I can’t turn down such a wonderful group of young people,” she says with a laugh. “I’m just going to go enjoy my swing.” Pops gives me a grin because this means he can sneak off to the front porch to smoke his pipe. I laugh at his childlike joy at this simple pleasure that is so bad for him, yet I can’t bring myself to stop him.

I take my plate into the kitchen where Anna is at the sink starting to wash dishes. “Go talk with your grandmother,” she says to me. I want to ask her how she knows that’s what I want to do, but I don’t. Instead, I walk out back and take a seat next to my grandmother.

“I like her,” Nana says.

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