Page 42 of The Someday Daughter
“When you saidgarden,” I tell Silas, “I thought you meant, like, five planter boxes in a backyard.”
He leans his head back, barking a laugh. “Clearly you haven’t met GG.”
“No time like the present,” Cleo says, and when I look back through the windshield there’s a woman waving to us from the cabin’s open door. She’s tall and wiry: tanned, muscled arms and faded denim overalls over a lavender T-shirt. When Mick opens the car’s back door, Puddles waddles toward her and GG crouches to the ground, reaching both arms out.
GG hugs Silas before saying anything to the rest of us, Puddles sandwiched between them.
“Hi, baby,” GG says, closing her eyes over the curve of Silas’s shoulder. It’s so intimate I find myself looking out over the garden, at anything but the two of them. No one’s ever called mebabyin my entire life. But then GG turns her green eyes on me and says, “You must be Audrey.”
Must I be? Cleo could be Audrey. I glance at her, but I guess it’s obvious: the knockout Japanese girl in platform boots and neon-pink eyeliner isn’t Camilla St. Vrain’s daughter. And GG already knows Sadie, so that leaves me. I reach to shake GG’s hand but she pulls me in for a hug instead, squeezing me tight and quick like a chest compression. When we separate she studies my face like she’s looking for something there, eyes tracking over my cheeks and my mouth and my hair. She says nothing else, just lets me go and reaches for Sadie. I watch her murmursomething in Sadie’s ear; Sadie closes her eyes and nods. Silas is watching them, too. But when our eyes meet he just smiles a little, rounds up Puddles, heads into the house.
A girl bounds toward him from the kitchen, all red hair and freckles. She’s maybe our age, in a white sun dress that slips off one shoulder as she throws her arms around Silas so forcefully he lets out anoof. Puddles leaps at the girl’s ankles.
“Maren,” Silas says breathlessly, laughing. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“Of course I’m home.” She lets him go and reaches for Puddles. The kitchen is full of white tile and wooden cabinets, flowers tied up to dry upside down over the sink. “It’s summer, dummy.”
“My cousin,” Silas says, gesturing at her. “We were born two days apart.”
“But I’m older,” Maren says, grinning at me. She thrusts out a hand and I take it, detecting some Puddles slobber. I wipe my palm on my jeans as soon as she lets go. “Cuter, too.”
She cackles as Silas rolls his eyes, reaching up to tug at his hair. He bats her hands away and everyone else files in from outside, Maren introducing herself around and then leaping over to crush Silas in one last hug.
“I’m meeting Ro and Miller at the lake,” she says. She casts a glance around the room, looking at each of us in turn. “You’ll all join later? You brought swimsuits?”
“Audrey, uh, doesn’t swim,” Mick says, half laughing. It’s not quite funny to me yet, but I force a smile anyways. And I did bring a swimsuit, just like everyone else.
“You can simplysun, then,” Maren says, shooting a smile at me as she walks backward toward the door. “I’m already late, anyway,Miller’s gonna throw a fit. I’ll see you over there. GG!” She lobs a dramatic wave in her grandmother’s direction. “Bye!”
“Take care, Mare bear,” GG calls, singsong, already filling a teakettle from the tap. And when Maren’s gone, “A freer spirit each time I see her.” She says it fondly. “She’s really coming into her own at that art school.”
“How are the boys?” Silas asks. “You still see them for Sunday dinners?”
“Of course,” GG says. She puts the kettle on the stove and turns to us, motioning everyone into chairs around the kitchen table. “Andrew starts high school this year, if you can believe that.”
“Barely,” Silas says, and GG laughs.
“He’ll be just like the rest of you soon,” GG says, then raises her eyebrows pointedly. “Gone.”
“GG,” Silas says warily, eyeing her. She shrugs, pulling open a drawer and rooting through it.
“I’m just saying, you could come see me more.”
“Called out,” Mick says, elbowing Silas, who sighs.
“I’m here now.” Silas waves a hand at Sadie. “And I brought your favorite person. Doesn’t that earn me some points?”
GG smiles at Sadie and Sadie smiles back at her, something passing between them. There’s a line of framed pictures on the table against the wall, a grinning woman with dark hair appearing throughout them like the thread tying everything together. She has Silas’s eyes, his nose. I know without having to ask that GG is Silas’s mom’s mom; that Sadie stepped in when all of them lost her daughter.
“A few points,” GG finally concedes. She drops tea bags into the kettle and then brings it over to the kitchen table, lining up a row of mugs.
“Not to be rude,” Cleo says, “but it’s like eighty-five degrees outside. Do you have anything colder?”
GG’s eyes flick up to her, but she just starts pouring in silence. It’s Sadie who finally speaks, for nearly the first time since we left Dr. Sun’s office this morning.
“Trust me,” she says, looking at Cleo. “You want this.”
“My homemade peppermint tea,” GG says, just as the smell hits me. Fresh and green. “Healer of all ailments.”
