memory — and also approximately zero patience when it came to people she didn’t care for.
Annie worried that with me being gone so long, she might not remember me.
Again, I knew better.
We’d kept in touch while I’d been gone, writing letters and having the occasional phone call. She’d remembered me just fine when I came back for Christmas break, and I had a feeling she’d never forget me — even if she ever was diagnosed with dementia.
And I also knew I’d never forget her.
Betty was the first one to ever open my eyes to a world outside of Stratford, to challenge me to take risks, to move passionately and unapologetically through life. “Anyone can lead an ordinary life, child,” she’d said to me one lazy afternoon. “But the best adventures are reserved for the ones brave enough to be extraordinary.”
I inhaled a deep breath, knocking gently before I pushed through the door and into her room.
Betty sat in the same rocking chair she’d been in the last time I left her to go back to UNC. She faced the window, though the curtains were drawn, and she rocked gently, humming the melody of “Good Morning” from Singing in the Rain. I smiled at the sight of her long, white hair, her magazine collages hung on each and every wall, old movie posters filling any space left between them. When the door latched behind me, Betty stopped rocking, ears perking up.
“Who’s there?”
“Why don’t you turn around and find out, old lady,” I sassed.
Betty’s head snapped around, her eyebrows drawn in like she was offended, but when her eyes settled on me, everything softened as a smile slid into place. “Well, I’ll be damned. Look what the wind blew in.”
I returned her smile, rounding the bed until I could sit on the edge closest to her chair. I leaned forward, folding one hand over hers as her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “You need to stop frowning so much,” I said, squeezing her wrist. “You’re getting wrinkles.”
“Ha!” she guffawed, squeezing my hand where it rested on her arm. “I smiled too much when I was younger. I’m just trying to reverse the damage.”
I chuckled as her eyes fell to the magazines in my arm.
“Are those for me?”
“Hmm… that depends. When’s the last time you stole someone’s pudding?”
“Last week,” she confessed, her gray eyes almost a silver as she leaned in conspiratorially. “But it was a vanilla one, so does it even count?”
I smirked, handing her the stack of magazines. She took them with a smile that doubled the one she’d greeted me with, already flipping through the pages as I settled back on her bed. It only took a few pages before she started telling me how Anne Hathaway was named after Shakespeare’s wife, and I nodded and listened intently as she continued flipping, pausing on each page to tell me a new story about a different celebrity.
Betty was born and raised in Stratford, and she’d never been farther than two counties from the town that she called home. Though she’d never physically traveled, her imagination wandered all the time, and she loved to escape into movies and books, to live the lives of spies and queens and young college students. The collages that decorated her walls brought her favorite adventures to life, and in her mind, she’d seen the world.
She’d seen everything.
“I’m getting married,” I told her after an hour had passed, and she paused where she was reading about Chris Pratt’s hobbies, a strange shadow passing over her features.
“That so?”
I nodded.
“How did he propose?”
“We were at a party with all his friends and family,” I said. “He’d just announced he was running for state representative.”
“A political man,” Betty mused. “Your father must love him.”
“He very much does.”
“And do you?”
I smiled, throat thickening in a way it never had when I was asked that question — not until it was asked by Noah Becker, anyway. “I do,” I said through the unfamiliar discomfort.
“Well,” she mused, nodding as her eyes lost focus somewhere on the page. “I’d like to meet him. Will you bring him by?”
“He’s coming into town in six weeks for the wedding,” I told her. “I’ll try to sneak him away.”
“And where will you sneak away to once the knot is tied?” She looked at me then, brows tugging inward.
I leaned forward, folding my hand over hers. “Not too far. I’ll never be too far.”
I knew she didn’t understand how much time had passed since she’d last seen me,