my son. I want him with every breath in my body. I just need to make it happen.
11
Abigail
The rain doesn’t start until around two in the morning. I get a weather alert on my phone and wake up to check it. The weather app says the rain will last about a half hour and it will be light. Immediately after I get the alert, my phone rings.
“Gran?” I say as I sit up on the edge of the bed.
“It feels like rain,” she says.
“Yeah, I just got an alert. It’s just supposed to be a sprinkle.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know.”
I smile to myself. “Thanks, Gran. You doing okay?”
“Just fine,” she says, her words short. “I ran into Charles’s mother at the grocery store today.”
“Oh? How did that go?” I can already see the scene in my head. My gran probably gave my soon-to-be-ex mother-in-law the what-for.
“It went fine,” she replies. And I immediately know that something happened that she doesn’t want to tell me about.
“Gran… What did you do?”
She makes a noise in her throat. “Well…I might have…just a tiny little bit…told her what was going on.”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand even though I know Gran can’t see me. “She didn’t know?”
“No, she had no idea. So I congratulated her on the upcoming grandbaby. She went white as a sheet, I tell you. She sputtered like a leaky balloon. Then she went from white to red, and she told me I should keep the family business within the family.”
Gran snorts, and I know she’s not done yet, so I just wait.
“So I told her that since he shacked up with that other woman and knocked her up, I didn’t have to claim any of them as family anymore, which suits me just fine because I never did like his bony ass anyway.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said his ass isn’t bony, he just exercises a lot. I swear to God, Abigail, when God was giving out asses, he skipped right over that boy. He’s got nothing back there to hold his pants up. It’s almost like he has negative ass. So yes, I can call it bony if I want to.”
Gran is filled with righteous indignation. I love it.
“Then she had the nerve to tell me that wasn’t very charitable of me.”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum, biting back my laughter. I can just imagine Gran standing there in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly telling my mother-in-law off. I can see it all playing out in my head just like if I was there.
“So, was she happy about the baby?” I ask, and inside, my heart tweaks a little.
“She didn’t seem too happy about it, no.” She sniffs. “I’m pretty sure she knows he’s making a great big mistake, but she’s letting him do it without putting in her two cents.”
“Well, sounds like you put in enough cents for all of us,” I remind her.
“When you got good cents to give, you’re obligated to share them, Abigail.”
“Rightly so,” I comment. “Thank you for taking up for me.”
“Well, somebody has to do it.” Suddenly, her voice gets louder and she rushes on, her tone quick. “Speaking of which,” she says, “what’s this I hear about you and that boy?”
“What boy?”
“That boy from the lake. The one you were head-over-heels for that one summer.” I can hear her fingers tapping on the table next to her.
“You mean Ethan?” How the heck did she hear about Ethan?
“The Jacobsons think the world of that boy.” Her voice gets quiet. “He’s had a rough go of it.”
“Do you know the story?”
“Do you?” she fires back.
“He’ll tell me when he’s ready, Gran.”
“Have you asked him yet?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And he declined to answer?”
“He said when he tells me, he’s afraid I won’t like him anymore.”
“I have a feeling it’ll be just the opposite,” she says softly. “But it’s his story to tell, not mine.”
“That’s never stopped you before.” Gran runs the local grapevine at home. Once she learns of something, everybody has to know it.
“Do you want me to tell you?” Gran asks, a question in her voice.
“I’d rather let him tell me when he’s ready. But thank you for asking.”
“Well, the Jacobsons say he’s a good boy.”
“Gran,” I object, “he’s thirty-six. I think he’s past the good boy stage. And he has a son. I met him tonight.”
“He let you meet his kid?” Gran laughs. “Actions are worth a thousand words.”
I’m afraid to ask the next question, but I ask it anyway. “Do you