And then he dropped his hands. “Good night.”
My voice wouldn’t come out above a whisper. “Good night.” I opened the door, my legs all weak and shaky.
“Addie?” he called softly.
I turned. His eyes were warm and luminous. His lips tipped up in a smile. “I’m really glad I met you.”
10
hope
While she’d been talking, Gran had leaned back in her chair and gazed at the far wall. I’d sat there completely spellbound, feeling almost as if I were watching a movie, more than a little stunned by this glimpse into my grandmother’s youth.
Gran paused and closed her eyes. I wasn’t sure if she was falling asleep or just gathering her thoughts.
“Wow, Gran—did he take you flying?” I asked softly.
She opened her eyes, her mouth curved in a small smile. “Yes. Oh yes.”
“In what?”
“An air force bomber. A B-something.”
This was so unlikely that for the first time since she’d started talking, I wondered if this had really happened. She was, after all, a very elderly woman who’d just had a serious brain injury. I decided to dig for more details. “A B-17?”
“I think it had a higher number. I—I don’t really remember.” She ran a hand across her forehead and closed her eyes again.
I leaned forward. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m afraid I’m getting a headache,” she said.
“I’ll check and see if it’s time for your medicine.”
I went into the kitchen and picked up the hospital dischargeinstructions from the counter. As I was reading them, the back door opened and Nadine bustled in, carrying an entire mint plant. “I had to go all the way to the plant nursery in Covington to find this,” she grumbled, setting the plant on the windowsill.
I explained that Gran had a headache, and Nadine made a tsking sound. “It’s no wonder. She’s overdue for her medication, and she probably needs to lie down besides.” She gave me an I’m-onto-you look. “If you’d let me take care of her instead of sending me off on ridiculous errands, I could keep her a lot more comfortable.”
“She has some things she wants to tell me in private.”
“I figured.” Nadine went to the sink and washed her hands. “All you have to do, dear, is tell me you need some privacy. I can listen to an audio book—I have earphones and an iPod—and I can be in another part of the house doing laundry or cleaning the bathroom or otherwise making myself useful without hearing a word. The same goes for the aides on the other shifts.”
“I’ll tell her. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Nadine lifted one of Gran’s medicine bottles. “She needs two of these.”
I took the pills and a glass of water back into the dining room, gave them to Gran, and relayed the message.
“Hmph.” Gran swallowed the meds. “Can’t trust folks not to eavesdrop. Everything anyone says in Wedding Tree gets repeated all over town.”
“Nadine’s not from here. She lives in the country about twenty minutes away.”
Gran closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at the pile of boxes. “We haven’t made much progress, have we?”
“Not a lot.”
She lifted her hand and pointed to a large box in the corner marked “bed linens.” “Well, I think everything in that can go. It’s full of old tablecloths and towels and such.”
“What do you want me to do with them?”
