CHAPTER 5
Pauline
My grandmother wasawake when I arrived, propped against pillows—smaller than I remembered, but with eyes that could still cut through steel.
The hospital room smelled like antiseptic and sadness. Machines beeped in steady rhythm, tracking heartbeats and oxygen levels and all the things that reminded me how fragile she’d become.
The stroke had taken so much from her—the full use of her left hand, some of the sharpness in her speech, the ability to walk without assistance.
But Margaret Wells refused to be diminished. She had demanded extra blankets because the ones they provided were, in her words, thin as politicians’ promises. She had complained about the Jell-O, calling it a crime against dessert and an insult to gelatin everywhere. She’d charmed three separate nurses into bringing her contraband crossword puzzles, which were now scattered across her bed like evidence of rebellion.
“Baby girl.” Her face lit up when she saw me, and for a moment she looked like herself again. Like the woman who had raised me, who had braided my hair and packed my lunches andtaught me that loving my curls was an act of war against a world that wanted me to be something else. “Come here. Let me look at you.”
I crossed the room and bent to kiss her cheek. Her skin was papery thin, warm beneath my lips. I pulled a chair close to her bed and sat down, taking her hand in mine—her right hand, the strong one, the one that still gripped back. Her fingers felt more fragile than they used to, but they were steady. Still sure.
“You look tired,” she said. The words came out slightly slower than they used to but her eyes were as sharp as ever. They scanned my face thoroughly. “And angry. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Pauline Marie Wells.” She said my full name like a warning shot. “I know what your nothing face looks like, and that’s not it. Try again.”
I should have known better than to lie to her. I had never successfully lied to her in my entire life. She had a sixth sense for nonsense, honed through decades of dealing with difficult patients and difficult doctors and one very difficult granddaughter.
“I got into a car accident,” I said.
Her good hand tightened on mine. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I just backed into someone in a parking lot. Barely a scratch. But the car I hit was…” I trailed off, searching for words that wouldn’t make me sound insane. “Expensive. The repair bill is stressing me out.”
“How expensive?”
I told her the number.
Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “For a scratch? Lord have mercy.” She shook her head slowly. “What kind of fool drives a car like that?”
I didn’t answer. That was my first mistake.
My grandmother watched my face for a long moment, and I saw the exact second understanding dawned.
“This is the boy from college,” she said. Not a question.
“It’s not—he’s not—this has nothing to do with that.”
“Mmhmm.” The sound was deeply skeptical.
“It doesn’t.”
“You’ve been back in California for one month.” She held up a single finger. “One month. And somehow you’ve already crashed into his car specifically. Out of all the cars in this city. All the parking lots. All the people you could have reversed into.”
I wanted to say something about cosmic jokes and terrible timing, but she was absolutely right. Why did it have to be Jack Specter?
“Oh, dear.” She laughed at my expression, a real laugh that warmed something cold inside me. Then the laugh turned into a cough, dry and rattling, and my heart seized with terror.
I reached for the water cup on her bedside table, but she waved me off with her good hand.
“I’m fine. Stop looking at me like that.” She caught her breath, pressed her palm to her chest, and fixed me with a stare I knew too well, “When are you going to stop running from that boy and find a way past what happened between you?”
“I’m not running.”
