Next Man Up (Making the Score #2) - Tawdra Kandle Page 0,32

is, ah, less than reliable and my father isn’t in the picture, but she doesn’t know the whole story.”

“I won’t say a word. I promise.” Eli leaned forward as though he was going to touch my hand, but maybe thinking better of it, he sat back. “Like you said in the car, it’s easier to talk to someone you don’t know really well.”

“I guess.” I traced a triangular pattern on the comforter with the tip of one finger. “My grandmother was raised a Mennonite. I don’t know how much you know about the Amish and the Mennonites.”

He shrugged. “Amish wear bonnets and hats and drive buggies. And they make furniture, right?”

I laughed. “That’s a highly simplistic view of the community, but yeah, you’re covering the perspective that most of the world has. Mennonites have the same religious roots, but they are—or can be—different. My grandmother’s family was Old Order Mennonite. She grew up with the horse and buggy, plain dresses and separate schools. She probably would still be living that life, but she met my grandfather one day while she was working the family’s farm stand and he stopped to buy a watermelon.”

Eli grinned. “Love at first sight? Over watermelon?”

“Pretty much,” I nodded. “Fifty-eight years later, and they’re still deeply in love, so I guess that must’ve been some melon.”

“That’s a long time to be married. Cool.” Eli shifted, adjusting a pillow at his back.

“It is. They got married, and Grammy wasn’t exactly shunned the way you hear about in books or movies, but since Gramps wasn’t a Mennonite—he was agnostic—being with Grammy’s family was less than comfortable. But they bought a farm in the area anyway, and they settled down to have seven kids.”

“Holy fuck. That’s a lot of children.” Eli gave a silent whistle.

“It is. My mother was the seventh. I guess they knew early on, though, that she wasn’t quite . . . right. She didn’t behave like the other kids. She was impulsive and wild and disobedient. She had problems in school. Grammy and Gramps tried to get her help over and over, but my mother was unpredictable. And uncontrollable. She was diagnostic with schizophrenia when she was fourteen. They tried therapy, in-patient treatment, medicine, prayer, you name it. Nothing seemed to work. And when she was fifteen, she ran away from home.”

“God.” Eli winced. “Your grandparents must’ve been so worried.”

“They were. And more than that . . . my grandmother began to wonder if my mother’s illness was Grammy’s punishment for marrying outside the faith.”

“That’s crazy. She doesn’t still believe that, does she?” Eli watched me closely.

“No, she talked to several ministers and prayed a lot about it, and ultimately, she was smart enough to realize that things don’t work that way. But she was still struggling with the idea when my mom showed up back at the farm, nearly a year after she’d run away. She was malnourished, sick, half out of her mind—and eight months pregnant.” I hooked a finger at my chest. “With me.”

“Oh, my God.” This time, Eli did reach out to touch my knee. “Zelda. That’s—Jesus. What did your grandparents do?”

I stretched out my legs, staring at my toes. “I think at that point they were so relieved that she was alive—they’d begun to resign themselves to never knowing what had happened to her—that the pregnancy was kind of an also-ran. They decided they’d raise her child as their own, and my aunts and uncles rallied around that idea.” I tilted my head, smiling. “I might’ve had a crazy mother, but I never lacked for attention and love. And for some reason—maybe it was age or hormones or just the progression of the disease—my mother settled down a little after I was born.” I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong. She was never a real mother to me. I call her Lottie, just like her sisters and brothers do. Most of the time, she thinks I’m just another sibling. Every now and then she seems to remember I’m not—but she doesn’t usually understand that I’m the baby she had. She’ll still talk about baby Zelly sometimes. She just doesn’t get that I’m that baby.”

“Baby Zelly, huh?” Eli smiled, his eyes resting on me. “That doesn’t jive with the Zelda Porter I know. Or the Zelda Porter I’ve heard about all year long, anyway, if we’re going back to your premise that you and I don’t really know each other.”

Some of the quiet closeness I’d felt with Eli faded at