My Almost Ex (The Greene Family #2) - Piper Rayne Page 0,66

almost an identical replica of the instructor’s, except she’s added little details like a glow around the moon and the flurries of snow aren’t just dots.

“Are you an artist?” I ask.

She laughs. “Well, you really did lose your memory then.”

I frown. “So I knew that?”

She laughs again and pushes up her dark glasses. “Yeah, you did. We talked all the time about…” She nods toward Adam.

“We did?”

She leans closer. “His love of drawing. That’s why you started organizing these nights. To get him to draw. You don’t remember that, huh?”

I try to make sense of what she’s suggesting, but why would I organize art nights at the retirement home so that Adam could draw? If he wanted to draw, he could have done it at home. I didn’t have to drag him here.

“Lucy dear, will you see me back to my room?” Mrs. Pierce announces loudly.

Adam’s gaze finds mine from across the way. He starts to rise, but I wave to tell him to sit down.

“Just get Ivy to help you, Iris,” Earl says. “The girl doesn’t want to see all your fancy things.”

Iris stands and grabs the cane from next to her. “Shut up, you old fool.” She points her cane at him.

I bite my lip to stop from laughing, and Adam shakes his head across the room.

We leave the room as the complaints start about how their trees don’t look like trees and someone’s mountains have no peaks.

Mrs. Pierce walks with purpose, and we get to her room down the hall. Earl was right, fancy is an understatement for her room. You’d think she brought in a decorator. Everything looks elegant and expensive. But it’s her walls that amaze me. Paintings and drawings and sculpted art, every piece more beautiful than the last.

“Sit down.” She goes to her fridge.

The great thing about Northern Lights is that it enables the residents to have apartments of their own, but the residence keeps them busy with extracurriculars.

She returns with a bottle of wine and two glasses, all the while walking with her cane.

“Oh, I’m not sure if I should drink. They’re probably expecting me back.”

“Suit yourself.” She pours herself a glass of wine and sits in an ugly recliner instead of her gorgeous couch. “This was my Erwin’s.” She pats the chair’s arm in a loving way. “He passed three years ago now.” She points around the room. “You see all this? He said I could do whatever I wanted, he just wanted his recliner. So now it’s the only seat I sit in. He was right to dig it out of the trash all the times I tried to throw it out.”

“I can see that.”

She sips the wine and places the bottle closer to me than her—probably as an invitation if I change my mind. “Since it’s really only you and me who know this, I figured we should get away from all those ears. They act like they can’t hear, but believe me, they turn those hearing aids up when they think someone’s got gossip.” She eyes me and nods.

I lean in. “Okay, what do only we know?”

“You came to Northern Lights about four years ago and said you were Ethel’s granddaughter by marriage. Anyone who gets us off their hands is a saint to the staff, so when you volunteered to host a drawing class twice a month, they took you up on the offer.”

“But I did for a reason other than to just be nice?”

When Ethel and Dori cornered me at The Grind, I thought maybe old Lucy wasn’t as bad as I thought. She volunteered at a retirement center, so how selfish could she really be? But maybe I was wrong.

Mrs. Pierce shakes her head and sips her wine, leaving me in suspense. I’m about to grab that glass out of her hand and down it so she can fill me in on what the hell is going on.

“It took about a year before you trusted me enough to tell me. Your beloved didn’t come with you one night and that spurred our conversation. Sure, you’d compliment all my paintings, but we never really talked. Plus, Ethel and Dori can be possessive, you know? I want to say, ‘Hey, you have, like, thirty grandchildren between the two of you, ever hear of sharing?’”

My shoulders scrunch. Mrs. Pierce must not have any family around here.

“Right now, Ethel’s probably trying to figure out why you’re not back yet.” She glances at the door as though that’s a real