Play It Safe(100)

The visit went as well as it could. She wasn’t needy or whiney. She seemed in good spirits. She just wasn’t the woman I knew.

Though, she did have it in her to mutter, “Pleased to see you in a skirt and heels, child, though that skirt is a little tight.”

That was the only flicker of Grandma Miriam she gave me.

And this devastated me.

So much, I was virtually silent on the drive home. Gray asked if I was okay and when I lied to him that I was and he didn’t believe me, he let it go but asked for my hand and held it all the way home. I just sat in his truck staring at the passing landscape, letting the visit seep into me.

When we got home, I changed into jeans, got a glass of wine and went to the porch swing.

About two minutes later, carrying a bottle of beer, Gray joined me.

Shifting me then settling me with my back to the side of his front, his arm around my chest, my head on his shoulder, he murmured, “Talk to me, Ivey.”

“She isn’t her,” I whispered.

“Told you that, honey.”

He did. He’d never put her in a home if there was a little spitfire left, I knew that anyway. But still, he told me what to expect.

“You’re you and I’m me,” I went on to explain. “You’re thirty-three, still hot, still vital, still Gray and I’m still me. She’s not her.”

“Ivey –” he started but I interrupted him, tears gathering in my eyes.

“Whoever did this to us, they took that away from me. I got you back but her I lost. I know she declined, I just saw it but it was slow and I wasn’t here for her and now it’s done and I’ll never get that back. I got you back but I’ll never get that back and that hurts me, Gray. In the end, she liked me, she trusted me and she could have come to love me and I was already growing to love her. They took that away from her and they took that from me and it hurts.”

Gray drew in an audible breath as his arm gave me a squeeze but he didn’t reply.

Then again, there was nothing to say. I spoke the truth, he knew it and there was nothing either of us could do.

So I just lifted my legs, knees cocked so my soles were on the porch swing beside me, my weight in Gray and he held me and sipped his beer while I sipped my wine, My eyes were on the meadow beside his house where the horses were wandering, the tears I was shedding for losing Grandma Miriam silently rolling down my cheeks.

Thus visits to Grandma Miriam as often as I could were added to my schedule. I couldn’t go every day but since my first visit, I’d been there four times. I didn’t stay hours but I brought her flowers then a box of chocolates then a plant to spruce up her room then a book because she liked reading. I sat with her, I chatted with her, I held her delicate hand with its loose papery skin and liver spots. I tried to make her laugh and often got a smile. And I did this because the woman I knew for a short time who I liked and respected might be gone but this woman remained and I was going to give as much as I could and take as much as I could get in the time remaining.

And doing it, my decision to have it out with Gray’s uncles had been firm but it was then planted in concrete. Okay, so they may never pay Gray what I thought they owed him. But they’d get a piece of my mind.

I hadn’t yet done that because I knew I was so pissed I’d probably screw it up. And anyway, I had other stuff to do to look out for me, for Gray and settle in our new life together.

So there I was, wandering through the grocery store, our menus planned for the next several days, a grocery list resting on top of my purse and my cart filled with what we’d need.

Mustang’s grocery store, called Plack’s, was like everything else in Mustang. One town over, a town Gray told me was established about a decade after Mustang, was different. Mustang was day, that town, the town of Elk, was night. Mustang might be the county seat but Elk was the hub. They didn’t mind demolishing and rebuilding. They had two strip malls, a huge-ass cinema with six screens, massive home and do-it-yourself stores and two big, chain grocery stores.

But not Mustang. Mustang didn’t have anything like that. And the citizens of Mustang didn’t care. Except to use the cinema (where I’d gone with Gray when I was there before), Mustangians stuck to their patch. Thus everyone in Mustang went to Plack’s.

The hotel was on the southeast corner of the courthouse square, the elementary school at the southwest, the library at the northeast and Plack’s at the northwest.

It had not been built in 1912. By the looks of it, I’d guess the 70’s. And it had never been renovated. The building was small for a grocery store, the aisles were narrow and the shelves were packed. But, with increasing experience, I noticed they had everything. They might only have a couple of boxes of cake mix rather than a stacked row but they still had every type you could buy. Not that I got cake mixes. I was the stylish girlfriend to a rancher cowboy. I might wear high heels but I still baked cakes from scratch.

Seeing as they had everything you might need, you didn’t need a big chain store that also had a pharmacy and sold toys, homewares and inexpensive clothes if you had Plack’s. And anyway, the pharmacy was on the square and you could get toys, homewares and (it had to be said) not inexpensive clothes at Hayes.

So I was in Plack’s contentedly dwelling in my rancher cowboy’s stylish girlfriend zone, perusing the chiller cabinet cheese selection looking for crumbled bleu to put on the steaks I was going to be broiling that night when it happened.