She's Up to No Good(99)

“My grandfather said my grandmother would bring a date to his funeral. I didn’t realize he meant a specific date.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“A little over five years.”

“Why now, I wonder?”

I shrugged and took a bite to avoid giving away that I thought I knew the answer. “Did your grandmother ever remarry?”

He shook his head. “She could have. She was young when my grandfather died.”

I looked at his left hand as he picked up his coffee cup. He wasn’t wearing a ring, but there was still a line of skin that was ever-so-slightly paler than the rest of his hand. Glancing at my own, I didn’t see the same line. I’d stopped wearing my ring when Brad left.

“Am I really the first girl you’ve been with since—well—you know?”

He choked on his coffee. I hadn’t meant to ask that. It just came out. “I—um—no, that wasn’t—” He set the mug down and fidgeted with a napkin. “I just hadn’t brought anyone . . . here.”

I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

But he took my hand, tracing the outline of it with his index finger, then brought my palm to his lips. Such a simple gesture, but I wanted to sweep the dishes to the floor, hop onto the counter, and reenact the previous night, minus Jax’s interruption.

Pulling my hand to his chest, he smiled slowly and placed one of his knees between mine. “What do you want to do today?”

I leaned in and kissed him, embarrassment forgotten. “You,” I whispered.

He looked over his shoulder. Jax was lounging in the sunlight by the window. “Think we can beat her to the bedroom?”

Jax picked up her head. We looked at each other and laughed. She put her head back down as I began to tiptoe exaggeratedly, Joe following me.





After a day in bed—and the shower—and a return trip to the kitchen, Jax whining slightly from the shut bedroom, I was a little nervous about dinner. Yes, Sofia had given her seal of approval two nights earlier. But there was a big difference between telling me Joe liked me and seeing her after what we had just spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours doing. But my curiosity about Tony and my grandmother was stronger than my apprehension.

Joe’s father was due back the following day, Sofia said as she greeted us, kissing me firmly on both cheeks and holding out my hands to look at me. I marveled that so much had happened in the span of a business trip to California.

Then again, I was on my grandmother’s “business trip” as well. That thought was sobering. No, she hadn’t set a return date, and yes, she might drag it out a little longer now that she and Tony had reconnected. But eventually we would have to go home.

We sat at the same table, clearly the spot of honor, Tony greeting his niece with a paternal hug and kiss. Sofia laughed merrily every time she saw any sign of affection between my grandmother and her uncle.

“What is it? Seventy years?” she asked. “And you’re like teenagers.”

My grandmother looked at Tony, a sparkle of humor in her eye. “We were much worse as teenagers.”

Joe nudged my knee under the table, and I suppressed a grin. I knew way too many details.

“Please, you were worse in your thirties,” Sofia argued.

I looked at my grandmother accusingly. “You said nothing happened after you married Grandpa.”

“She means the boat,” Grandma said, sighing dramatically.

“I saw how Uncle Tony dove in after you,” Sofia said. “You two weren’t fooling anyone.”

“Is that when you stole a boat?” I asked.

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“She tried to steal a boat,” Tony said. “But she didn’t know how to drive it, so I had to steal it for her.”

“Excuse me,” my grandmother said. “First of all, I borrowed the boat. It was returned in perfect condition. Second of all, if you”—she pointed a finger at Sofia—“hadn’t gotten stuck out there, I wouldn’t have needed to steal a boat.”

“I thought you didn’t steal it?”

She grinned.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN


July 1968


Hereford, Massachusetts


“Lunch!” Evelyn called, standing at the big cooler they had dragged down to the beach. Kids of all ages came running, from the teenagers down to Bernie’s and Helen’s young grandchildren.

The children grabbed the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches that hadn’t changed in the twenty years since Joseph bought the cottages, made in the morning, assembly-line-style, before everyone trekked down to the beach. Not that Joseph and Miriam stayed in the cottages anymore. The house on Main Street had air conditioning units now. And someone was always willing to drive into town to get them and bring them to the beach when they wanted to watch their grandchildren and great-grandchildren play in the surf.

Evelyn surveyed the chaotic scene. She and Margaret were the ones who came to stay for the whole summer, Evelyn running the main cottage while Margaret manned Bernie’s, shuffling kids between the houses as their siblings came in for a week here, two weeks there. Fred came up every other weekend, then would be there for two weeks in August.