“How are you?” she asks, turning my chin from side to side. “Something is different here. . . .”
My hand goes to the three stitches in my lip, and she waves her hand dismissively. “No, not that. That just makes your lip seem full and pouty.” She angles my chin once more, turning it to one side and then the other, and I hold my breath. Gran has a way of looking at you that feels like she’s actually looking into you, and today it makes me nervous about what she might see.
“I dunno,” she says finally, dropping her hand. I exhale. “You look good today. Good enough you should’ve made it to brunch with me and the girls.”
I smile at this. “The girls” who make up her chapter of the Red Hat Society are all in their seventies, but you really would never know it. They’re a rowdy bunch. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was pretty tired after yesterday.”
Gran gives a quick nod. “Well. I’m glad you’re up and about. We’ve got work to do. Brownies. Twenty-five dozen of ’em for our booth at the fair.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. Now come help me with the groceries.”
We unload the car, Gran dons her red apron as I preheat the oven, and then the two of us get down to the business of baking. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend time with Gran. She directs and I follow, and we fall into a rhythm of cracking eggs, and measuring, and stirring, sometimes talking the whole time, sometimes quiet, in our own thoughts. Today we stay quiet for a little while, but I know it won’t last. She waits until I pour my first batch of batter into the greased pan to start with the questions.
“So,” she says, not so casually, “your mother says you had your little fender bender over at the coast yesterday? That you went driving over there without telling anyone?”
I busy myself with the spatula, scraping all the batter from the bowl, feeling bad about taking off and worrying my parents, not to mention getting in an accident.
“Were you on the prowl?” she asks with a mischievous grin.
“What?” I laugh. Her question surprises me, even though nothing about her should surprise me anymore. “On the prowl?”
“Isn’t that what you girls call it now?” she asks as she lifts her mixing bowl with hands that tremble just a touch more than they used to. “Like a cougar?”
I hold a baking pan steady beneath it, and she pours the batter. “No. That’s . . .” I laugh, wishing Ryan were here to hear that one. “That’s a totally different thing, Gran. And I don’t think anybody calls it that.”
“Well. Whatever you want to call it. That’s why I went to the beach when I was your age. Soon as I slipped on that bathing suit, all the boys came around.” She opens the oven, slides in our two pans, and closes it. “That’s how I caught your grandfather, you know.” I smile at the thought of a young Gran, on the prowl for boys at the beach. “That’s why he married me so fast. He saw me in that bathing suit and couldn’t wait to see me out of it, if you know what I mean, and when we—”
“HOW LONG FOR THOSE TO COOK?” I interrupt.
Gran winks at me. “Forty-three minutes exactly.” She starts measuring out cocoa powder for another batch, and I reach for the flour.
“I wasn’t on the prowl,” I say, avoiding her eyes. “I just went to get away. Do something for a change.” Vague as it is, I know she’ll support this reasoning.
“Well, that’s good,” she says. “Sometimes you’ve got to go off on your own. Get out. Have a day to yourself at the beach.” She says it like she’s proud of me, like it’s a sign that I’m showing progress, or moving on, and I feel a little twinge of guilt, that makes me keep talking.
“I didn’t really make it to the beach—I crashed the car when I got there, so I didn’t . . .”
Gran turns to me. “Well, it’s the fact that you went at all, Quinn. It’s a start.” She carries both of our bowls to the sink and turns on the faucet. “You should go back. I tell you what—if I looked like you, I sure as hell wouldn’t be spending my summer sitting in the house alone; I’d be out on the prowl.” She winks again. “Or at least on the beach, in a bikini underneath that glorious sun.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I, and this is one of the things I love about Gran. She knows when to say just enough. And today it’s just enough to get me thinking, and my thoughts drift back to Colton and his words: “You know where to find me.”
I do, and I can’t stop thinking about that fact.
“Maybe I will,” I say after a little while. “Go back there sometime.”
“There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those.”
—Michael Nolan
CHAPTER NINE
BROWNIES ARE HOW I justify making the drive to Shelter Cove the next morning. I ran into his bus, and then he took me to the hospital and was concerned enough to check up on me. Sweet enough to bring me a flower. Wise enough not to push too hard. The least I can do is bring him a plate of brownies. I know from a post his sister wrote that he has a sweet tooth and that brownies were the first thing he’d wanted when he was allowed to start eating again, and Gran’s are the best. He at least deserves that. And then I’ll go to the beach.
I pile a plate high, seal it with plastic wrap, and scribble a note to my parents, who’ve gone out together this morning. Then I grab my beach bag and head out the door to make the same drive I did a couple of days ago, just as nervous, if not more so, as I was then.