“What do you want to do for dinner?” I ask, opening the fridge and cabinets.
“Oh, we’ll just eat leftovers,” she says, waving a hand.
“Leftoversyoucooked?” I ask.
“Well, we don’t want them to go bad.”
“Grandma, it’s your birthday. You should eat something delicious that you didn’t have to make.”
This has been an ongoing battle for as long as I can remember. I smile now, knowing that when I look back on it someday, I’ll miss this argument.
It took until I was sixteen before I had a birthday party with friends, and that involved pizza, which is definitely not the norm around here.
“What if I take you out to dinner?” I say. “I’ve got money saved from a car repair that didn’t end up happening.”
I pause. Burton somehow slipped the forty dollars from the coupon book back to me. Was that the reason he’d hugged me at his house that night? I tried to give it back to him during our “workouts,” but he refused to take it when I offered. Maybe I should invite him too.
And then we can tear up the coupon to the farm and call it a day.
“That sounds nice,” she says, “But I don’t want you spending your hard-earned money on me.”
“Actually, Marianne,” Grandpa adds, “we should take her up on it.”
“We’re not making her pay for us,” Grammie says.
“After all you’ve done for me, it’s the least I can do,” I say, practically pleading now. I really don’t feel like cooking.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I’ll go out to dinner on one condition.”
She lets the pause stretch, and for a moment, I’m wondering if time has stopped because she’s so still.
“Only if that young man who was in here earlier comes with us.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask, curious.
“Because I want to see him squirm when I ask him some questions.” She looks innocent, but she’s a firecracker.
Shaking my head, I say, “Grammie, he’s outside working to make the yard look beautiful. Is that anyway to show your thanks?” Sometimes I feel like the roles have reversed, and now I’m the parent and they’re the kids.
Grammie blows out a breath and says, “I guess not. I still want him to come, anyway. My birthday, my rules.”
I laugh and nod. “We should probably ask him first.”
“I’ll let you do that. I’ve got laundry to do,” she says. “Let’s plan to leave around four or five. Go on. Get outside. I know you’re itching to help.”
I lean down and kiss her cheek. She always knows.
As the door closes behind me, she calls out, “Check on that baby goat of yours!”
Right. Pearl. My little attack goat.
The back door is only a dozen steps from the pen. Pearl is already bleating loudly, carrying on like the world is ending.
“Good to see you haven’t lost the drama,” I tell her.
She bounds over, and I rub her fur before turning to leave.
She lets out a heartrending bleat.
