Page 95 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

I didn’t argue with her.

“Your fiancé,” Nancy began, but had to cough hard enough that it pitched her body forward. I eyed her just to make sure she didn’t slide from the wheelchair,much like she had at the dinner table. The visual made me shift on my feet. “Have you gotten any closer with him?”

I thought about last night at the bar, his whisky-coated words foggy now. “No.”

Nancyharrumphed, but it was a pleased sound.

“You don’t like him,” I said.

“I don’t know him,” she returned, voice tired. “I don’t care to, either, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m old and grouchy. I don’t like anyone I meet.”

“You liked Sumner.”

Nancy sighed again, but agreed, “I like Sumner.”

“I’m thinking about running away with him,” I said casually, as if the words weren’t ones that could change the entire trajectory of my future. “Sumner, I mean. I think I could make him into a good housewife.”

Nancy didn’t turn to look at me, but continued to focus on the green. “You’d give up everything for him?” she asked, skeptical. It was far easier to have such a weighted conversation when neither of us looked at each other. “Everything you’ve ever known for a man you met a month ago?”

Well, I did not like it when she put it that way. “I thought youwantedme to end up with Sumner instead of Aaron.”

“Love is the first thing to go when you’re struggling for money.”

I knew that, of course. It was, after all, one of the biggest things holding me to my parents like a chain around my wrist.

“But, if you choose the money path, you may end up like me,” Nancy went on, and if I hadn’t known anybetter, I would’ve thought her voice grew sad. “A widow after a loveless marriage with no children. Enough money to swim in, but nothing to spend it on and no one to spend it with. Now, which sounds better to you?”

It was another example of what life would look like if I chose Aaron, which should’ve made the answer obvious. I could’ve married Aaron, but it was a different kind of lonesomeness waiting for me then. The worst kind—being alone when the room is filled with people. But just because I chose Sumner now didn’t extinguish that fear. “Do you think I’ll ruin him?” A drip of sweat slid down between my shoulder blades, but I felt cold. “That I would be a black hole to his starlight?”

“I think you’re giving yourself an awful lot of credit if you think you can ruin him so easily. In fact, since you met him, I rather think it’s been the other way around, don’t you?”

I didn’t respond. It was true that over the course of the past month, I’d smiled more than I had in years. The muscles in my face had only just begun to grow used to it.

“Come here,” Nancy said, using her grip on my hand to draw me to the front of her wheelchair.

I knelt down, and for the first time in years, I felt like a little girl before her. I had fierce déjà vu of years past, looking up at Nancy. I could remember her in the different stages of my life, more of a pillar than my own parents were. She attended my graduations, she sat beside me at all the country club functions, she bought me birthday gifts. I remembered her young, when we’d swim in the east side pool together. I remembered her older,when she started having health issues. I remembered when she first was resigned to her wheelchair.

Her wrinkles were deeper now, her hair was whiter, and the life that’d burned in her eyes with the fire of her ire had dimmed. I desperately searched the depths for the flame now, but only found a flicker.

“Whatever you choose, youwillbe okay.” Nancy’s hand trembled as she held my fingers tighter, or attempted to—I could barely feel her grip. “Choose what you think will make you happy in the long-term. Build something from the ground up. Choose to be happy. You deserve it.”

I swallowed hard, lifting my chin. “Why are you being so serious? It’s not like you.”

“I just want the best things for you.” With her other hand, Nancy reached out and touched my cheek, pinching everything inside me tighter. “You’re the granddaughter I never got to have.”

“Stop—stop talking like this,” I ordered her, sniffing. “Stop being mushy-gushy.”

She patted my cheek, but there wasn’t enough strength to make it sting. “I’m trying to have a nice moment, you brat.”

But I didn’t want a nice moment. I didn’t want her speaking to me as if she’d never see me again.Later, I wanted to say.We’ll think about it all later. Sumner was right, though, when he said it was better to face something that scared me than to regret it later. I’d never be able to live with myself and if I left regrets with Nancy. Never. So, despite the burn in my eyes and the tension in mythroat, I nodded. “I’ll choose to be happy,” I whispered, squeezing her hand in mine. “Just for you.”

Nancy gave me a warm, satisfied smile. Smiles on Nancy were rare and normally were unsettling, but this one was beautiful. It lifted her wrinkles and lightened her eyes, giving me a clearer glimpse once more at who she was when she was young. “Good girl,” she said with tired affection, and pulled both hands back into her lap. “Now, enough with that sappiness. Let’s go find me some tush to gawk at.”

And off we went, leaving the serious moment behind at the cusp of the golf course, a memory trapped within the Alderton-Du Ponte Country Club forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nancy Rose Du Ponte passed peacefully in her sleep that night. I’d gotten the call from Ms. Jennings around seven-forty-five o’clock, answering to sobbing from the other line. Nancy had been tired after her excursion at the country club and had excused herself to her bedroom for a nap before supper. When Ms. Jennings went to wake her, Nancy had been gone. Sumner and I had been driving to Pierre’s for a late dinner of our own; it’d been the only reservation I could snag for that day. We’d turned around immediately, rushing to a person we were far too late to be there for.

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