I’m not sure what I was expecting from Gramma Sharon, but this was not it. And I kind of like it? She’s so much less intense than the Beaumonts. If someone told me she was JT’s grandmother, I would have believed it instantly.
Putting her fan down, Gramma Sharon starts shuffling cards. “Go on. I’m not going easy on you just because you don’t know how to play!”
I thought she was joking, honestly. But I look up how to play on my phone and she starts dealing. The back door opens and Marcus comes out with a glass of water and a small glass of brown liquor and ice.
“Good to see you, Sharon.”
She says hello to Marcus and takes a sip of the alcohol. “What is this?”
“We’re out of Jim Beam, so you get the good stuff.”
She scrunches her nose. “If you say so.” And takes another sip.
Marcus eyes up the cards and then turns to me and gives me the exact same better-you-than-me look Easton gave earlier—must be a family trait. Then he goes back into the house. Easton and JT haven’t come back out yet and I’m getting the feeling no one really likes to be alone with Gramma Sharon.
“Age before beauty,” she says, gesturing to me. I check my cards to see if I want the one on top of the discard pile. I don’t, so I tell her to go ahead. She pulls the top card of the deck, then discards a jack. I have two jacks, so I take it.
“So? How’ve you been?” she asks. She pulls from the deck again and discards a two.
How’ve I been? She asks it like she hasn’t seen Nate in a week, not nine-plus years. I look over the top of my cards at her, but she just fans herself, watching me expectantly. I have no clue how to even answer her, but for the first time, none of this feels like a trap?
And maybe that’s why everyone else is in the house. They’re scared of her because she doesn’t seem like the kind of woman you can bullshit. That’s why she’s asking me such a flippant question.
So I give her a flippant answer: “Kidnapped. How ’bout you?” I take a card from the deck and put down a three.
The corner of her mouth quirks slightly, like she’s impressed. Then she picks up the three and puts all her cards down. “Gin.”
I look down and she has an ace, two, my three, and a four—all clubs—a jack, king, and queen—all spades—and three sixes.
“How?” I ask. “That was so fast!”
“Gin’s a fast game, keep up.” She writes down her total and tells me to show my hand. She writes my total in another column and gathers all the cards to hand over to me. “Shuffle and deal.”
I do as she says.
“What was your kidnapper family like?” she asks. “I see they didn’t feed you.”
“No, that was all the time I spent starving while homeless,” I say quickly. I might be trying for a gotcha moment, but Gramma Sharon doesn’t even flinch.
“Well then, you get extra of my pies. I brought chocolate chiffon and key lime, so I hope you like both.”
I do. Gramma Sharon makes me smile. There’s something about her gruff, no-nonsense attitude I love. It reminds me of my own grandmother. My dad’s mom.
My earliest memories are all of her. After I was born, she would watch me during the day while my parents worked. She wasn’t like them at all. She had a Christian upbringing, even went to church with us on Sundays, but she was different.
She actually practiced what Christians preached. She was kind and generous. She didn’t judge people, and she showed me more love than my parents ever did. She would walk me to the library, and if it was too hot or too cold to be outside, we would sit in the children’s section, where she’d read me every book I brought her.
On nice days—usually in the fall or spring—she would let meplay on the playground while she read on one of the nearby benches. Her eyes went up to me every time I called out to her to watch me go down the slide or jump from the swing. She’d applaud her free hand against her thigh, asking me to do it again until I got bored and she could return to her book.
Then, when I was six and started going to school all day, she stopped watching me. I didn’t find out until later it was because my mom thought she was ungodly. She disagreed with how Grammy practiced her religion and demanded that my father stop talking with her. Grammy also stopped going to our church.
I didn’t even know she’d died until one day I came home from school in fifth grade and my parents were both home. My mom was in a black dress and my father in his suit. He was sitting quietly at the kitchen table and didn’t even look up when I walked in.
When I asked what was wrong, my mother waved a dismissive hand and casually said, “Your father’s mom died last week. The funeral was today. Go upstairs and get your homework done. I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.”
I went upstairs and cried silently in my room. That was the same year my dad ripped up the story I wrote. It was then that I started to realize something was wrong with my parents. They weren’t like other people. They were hateful and full of self-righteous superiority.
The Beaumonts may not be self-righteous, but they’re definitely cut from a different cloth than Gramma Sharon.
