This was a conversation I wanted to avoid. I sighed. “I know. You’re going to say that she might not remember me, right?” I was blunt. Better to get straight to the point.
Mom didn’t reply right away. She kept her eyes on the road. She had kept strong since finding out that her father had passed. I think it didn’t feel real to her either. Or maybe she was just better at hiding it.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to get at,” she said quietly. “I just—I just don’t want you to get there and have your hopes up.”
I had just found out that my grandfather had a heart attack in his driveway and died as soon as he got to the hospital. My hopes weren’t exactly high, but I replied, “I know. I’ll try not to.”
I sunk back down into the passenger seat and shut my eyes again. I dreamt about a good day. A day when we sat on my grandparents’ porch as Nan braided my hair and Grampy was trying to blow away the smoke from his charcoal barbecue.
“Why don’t you throw away that stupid thing and get a propane one already?” Nan asked him.
Grampy tried to hide the smile on his face. He could certainly afford to upgrade, he just liked being stubborn.
“If it works, it works,” he replied, taking a cloth to wipe his face.
“Stubborn,” she said back. “Girl, I hope you aren’t half as stubborn as he is,” she said to me.
“I hope she is! It’ll save her a lot of money for college.”
Nan laughed at that.
Then Mom came out the front door saying, “The smoke is getting all in the house! The next thing you know you’ll have the alarm going off.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell your daddy,” Nan said. “Soon enough we’ll be bunking up in the tree house with you, Annaka.”
“Hey! There’s no room up there for all of us,” I pointed out.
Nan and Grampy both let themselves go in a gentle laugh.
Even if they were dysfunctional at times, they made me feel at home. I still remember one morning waking up to Grampy and Nan arguing outside. Grampy was keen on painting our house yellow, a bright alternative to our basic grey. Though Nan and Mom both wanted a baby blue, they talked about it for weeks, and eventually Grampy came around. He even said he had picked up the blue paint and was going to get started early in the morning. As the sun rose, I moved to my window to see Mom and Nan both looking speechless in front of a fresh coat of yellow paint on our home. I still laugh at the memory from time to time. As stubborn as he was, he was also a gentle man. He used to sing me lullabies, and would tell me the story about how he met Nan. He told me that he won her over on a dance floor with his moves. I would love to see it for myself. He was a gentle giant who showed his soft side. He wore his heart on his sleeves, but also rolled them up as he checked the closets for monsters. But after Clay came around, I told Grampy to leave the closet alone.
“What if they aren’t mean monsters?” I would say. “What if they’re friendly?”
My grandfather paused with a hand on the doorknob and I could hear a grin in his voice. “Your imagination gets the better of you.”
“No, it is the best of me.”
He let laughter fill his lungs and left my closet alone.
Thinking back, maybe my imagination did get the better of me. When Grampy noticed all of the drawings in my journal, he showed me how to “properly” journal, according to him. He began having me write about my day each night before I went to bed. I wrote a lot about the time he and I spent together, and the adventures we got into. As an English teacher, this was his way of trying to get me to read and write at an early age. One time he had taken me on an adventure to Cape Forchu so I could write about it. Later on he peeked over my shoulder to see my doodles of his truck driving up the hill of Cape Forchu with the lighthouse sitting up top. I could tell it wasn’t what he expected, but he gave me a smile and a pat on the shoulder anyway. Maybe that’s how I was stubborn. I always wanted to do things my way—I must have learned that from him.
I woke up as rain began pelting against the windows.
“I thought you were my co-pilot,” Mom said as I stretched and yawned. “You hungry?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
Mom nodded and turned off at the next exit and made her way to a burger joint drive-through.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“A cheeseburger with—”
“I’ll get a cheeseburger, fries, and a large coffee,” she ordered on my behalf. Then she said to me: “I need you to stay awake with me, okay?”
“Fine.” I shook myself awake. I guess the least I could do was keep Mom company on a three-hour drive.
Mom gave the drive-through employee a ten and told him to keep the change. I devoured the burger and fries immediately and sipped away at the coffee as Mom made her way back to the highway. Her body language was tense. Her hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, and I watched as her shoulders began to tighten up. I knew she was about to say something I wasn’t going to like.
“I know our family has always been a tight unit. For a long time it’s only been you and me, and I thought we’d be returning to Yarmouth much sooner than this. I’m sorry that we didn’t. I really am.” She said all this without taking her eyes off the pavement.
“Mom,” I cut in, “what are
