Crazy (The Gibson Boys #4)(64)

“I know he’s happy Vincent and Sawyer are moving back.”

“Me too.” She ambles over to her rocker and gets settled. “The boys think I want them all together because it makes me happy. And it does. It thrills this old heart to death. But you know why I really want Vincent back here?”

“Why?”

“Because once you get to be my age, you realize family is absolutely all you have.”

I sit on a barstool. The weight of her words falls on my shoulders, pressing me down into the hard wooden seat.

“That’s unfortunate for people like me,” I say.

“Why is that, honey?”

“My family … isn’t like your family. We just aren’t close.”

I look at the ceiling, concerned that I feel so comfortable with this woman to be opening up like this. But now that the sieve is open, I can’t close it. I don’t want to. With every word, I can feel my load lightening.

“What are they like?” she asks.

“Well, my dad is gone. My mom …” Tears well up in my eyes. “She doesn’t really even like me.” I blink back the water that threatens to spill over my cheeks. I can feel my nose turn red as I try to rein in my emotions. “I don’t know what I ever did to her, but … I have to earn her love, and that’s hard …”

She rocks gently back and forth in her rocker. The sound is soothing in a very strange way.

“Dylan, sweetheart, I’m going to tell you something. And this is a fact with my hand up.” She waits for me to look at her. “That’s not love.”

I try to speak, but my mouth is too dry.

“You don’t have to earn someone’s love. Their respect? Yes. Their loyalty? Absolutely. But true love comes freely. You can’t stop it or start it. You have no control over it.”

Her words hit me in the chest, digging right into my heart. I think they should hurt. They should cut me deep with the truth that my mother doesn’t love me. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t hurt. Because I accepted it as truth a long time ago. But clearly, from these tears, I haven’t fully grieved the loss of love from my mother.

“But here’s another thing for you,” she says. “Parents always, always love their children.”

“But …”

She sighs. “Parents are people too. Take my Jessie. I know she loves her sons. But someone looking from the outside may think, ‘How could she? She left them. She wasn’t a great mother.’ Those people have never considered that maybe the best thing she could’ve done for Vincent and Peck was to leave them.”

I think about that. If she was strung out or into bad things, maybe Nana’s right. But I wouldn’t have thought of that.

“Parents make mistakes,” she says in that steady way of hers. “Sometimes, they don’t know what to do or say. Sometimes they don’t even realize how badly they’ve treated you. They’re just dealing with things the best way they can. Does that make sense?”

I nod. It does. I’m going to need to really think about that to absorb all of it, I think, but it makes sense.

It also hurts my heart.

“Will you promise me something, Dylan?”

“Um, sure,” I stammer.

“Always remember what I just said.”

“What part?”

She smiles. “All of it. One of these days, I’m not going to be around. I haven’t told the boys yet because they’ll just worry themselves crazy, but I had some tests come back not too good. I meet with a specialist next week.”

“Nana,” I say, mouth agape. “You have to tell them.”

“I will. I promise. But I’ve been sitting on this information for a month, just waiting on the right time to tell them.” She looks at me intently. “I’m fine with whatever happens. I’ve had a great life. I’m ready to go if the good lord calls me home. All I have left are Peck and Vincent, and Vin has Sawyer. Peck has no one. And I’ve sat here praying for God to send him someone …”

I swallow. Hard. “Oh, Nana. I’m not sure that …” I laugh nervously. “I mean, Peck and I aren’t … together. We aren’t serious.”

“You’ll see.”

As though that says it all, she stands up. A satisfied look is on her face, but I don’t feel like this can be over. I can’t have that thrown on me. Is she nuts?

“Nana, with all respect, I promise you that I’ll always … be there for Peck if he needs me, but …”

How do you tell a woman that you can’t promise your everlasting love to her grandson?

I stand in her kitchen, mid-shrug, when she laughs.

“You’ve failed me already,” she says.

“How’s that?”

“You forgot what I said.”

My brain clouds with what feels like a thousand things she just said. “What part, exactly?”

She stands in front of me, taking both of my hands in hers. They’re cool to the touch. The veins sit at the top of her skin as she squeezes me with the grip of a baby.

“You can’t start or stop love, honey,” she says. “It’s just there, or it’s not, and it’s present between you and Peck. Everyone can see it. Maybe not you yet because it’s a scary thing to finally see. It took Walker forever.” She laughs. “But you will. You can’t deny it forever.”