12
Raine
"Listen to me, Grandson. There's going to come a time in your life when I'm not around, and I need to know you're going to be okay without me." Granddad holds one palm on my chest and the other on my back. "Breathe." I look him in his grayish eyes and do as he says.
"I'm scared," I tell him. "Why does this keep happening?" The nervous feeling beating through every muscle in my body fades away as I focus on Granddad's face—the worry he always tries to hide with bravery.
"Raine," he says with a heavy sigh. "People make mistakes in life, and sometimes there are incredible consequences that come along with those mistakes. There are also times when others have to pay for mistakes they didn't make."
Breathing a little deeper, I lean back into the sofa I had been sprawled out on before the shakes started. "But, what does that have to do with me? Are you talking about my parents again?"
"Here we go," Lenore says, rushing into the room. "Take this, sweetie." She hands me a glass of water and sits down on the other side of me. "Did you take your medicine this morning? I left it in a dish beside your breakfast plate."
"I think so," I tell her. I take those stupid pills every morning, and I choke almost every time I try to swallow them. Sometimes when I choke, the pill flies out of my mouth, and I don't go looking for it.
"It's been a good while this time. I wonder what triggered it?" Lenore asks Granddad. He's too busy staring at me with sad eyes, though. I don't like when he looks at me this way. I stand up from the couch and make my way toward the kitchen for a snack. Whenever I get the shakes, it makes me hungry, like it's taken all of my energy away or something. As I'm leaving the room, I hear Lenore continue talking. "How could a mother do this to her child? Didn't that woman know how lucky she was to have a baby in the first place? For goodness sake, some women who were put on this earth to be mothers can't have babies, and instead those precious gifts go to people like her.”
I'm around the corner for most of the conversation, but I continue to listen, curious to hear what else she's going to say. I poke my head out just enough to peek back into the room, and I watch Granddad place his hand on her shoulder as he shakes his head. "I don't know what my son saw in that woman, Lenore. She made a monster out of him too." A monster? Were my parents both monsters? Is that why they're gone? I don't understand much of this. "I gave my son everything, and now he's in prison. My only hope in life is that Raine doesn't follow in their footsteps."
"I know you won't let that happen," Lenore tells Granddad. "Raine is lucky to have you."
Granddad has that look on his face like he’s messed up or had a bad day. He blames himself for everything, but I’m old enough to know none of the things he takes the blame for are his fault. “I never thought I could allow it to happen to my own son either, but it did," Granddad says.
"Raine is a good boy," Lenore says. "He's only going to do good things with his life."
"Thank you for saying that," Granddad tells her.
Lenore stands from the sofa and smooths out the wrinkles in her apron before heading in my direction.
With quick steps, I pull back away from the corner but continue to listen as Granddad stops her. "Oh, Lenore, I have guests coming over on Friday night to discuss a possible donation I may be making to the town. Are you able to stick around for a few extra hours and put together a dinner? I'll pay you double time. I know Friday nights you go to the center for parents’ night with Lauren, and I hate to interrupt, but you know how helpless I am in the kitchen, and it's such late notice to find a caterer."
I can hear the smile in Lenore’s warm voice as she answers the way she always does. "Of course, I’ll be here, but would it be okay if I brought Lauren here to help me?" Lenore asks him.
"Lenore, any time you want her here, you know I'm happy to have her."
Lenore's daughter, Lauren, always looks at me strangely, like I have two heads, but she's very friendly and gives a lot of tight hugs. She doesn't say much, but when she does, I have a hard time understanding her, which is weird since she's a lot older than I am. When I asked Granddad why she didn't talk like we do, he said it was because God made her special, giving her an extra big smile and special-looking eyes that are shaped like almonds. I think that was his way of saying there's something different about her. I always wonder if she's sick like me, but in a different kind of way, and maybe that's the reason she's always giving me hugs.
"Goodness!" Lenore shouts as she almost runs into me. "Have you been standing here this whole time, Raine?" Busted.
"No, I was looking for the bag of chips I opened yesterday, but I couldn't find them. I thought maybe you'd know, so I was—do you know where they are?"
She places her hand on my back and guides me back into the kitchen. "Well, if you didn't already hear, Lauren is coming over on Friday night. She'll be so excited to see you." Lenore squeezes her arm around my shoulders and kisses the top of my head. "You feeling okay now, honey?"
"Yeah, I'm okay." I want to ask her why I have the shakes because of my mom, but then she'd know for sure I was listening the whole time.
The sun is rising latereach day closer we come to fall, but I seem to wake up at the same time every morning, no matter where the sun is. There's only one thing I enjoy about sleeping outdoors, and that's watching the sun rise. Subconsciously, I must never want to miss it.
Gently, I lift my arm from Haven and pull myself up while feeling a slight ache from last night's tremors. When the seizure died out so quickly at Haven's house, I had a feeling I'd be in for a rude awakening later in the day, and sure enough it happened last night.
With the trees settled the way they are, the sky looks like two gallons of paint—orange and pink—are pouring over the treetops and spilling into the water. I glance over at Haven, wishing she didn't have to miss this, but she's still sleeping. Placing my hand on her back, I run my fingertips up and down her spine a few times until her eyelashes flutter, exposing her beautiful eyes. "Good morning," I tell her. Within a minute of coming to her senses, she squints against the brightness of the colors blinding us from the reflection of the water. "I thought you might like to watch the sunrise. It's not too bad today."
She yawns and stretches her arms out to the side while clutching the blanket up to her chest. "Do you always watch the sunrise? You seem to talk about it a lot." I can tell she’s trying to sound alert for just waking up, but the grogginess in her voice is a tell-all.
"When I sleep outside, yeah. Sometimes, it's the only beautiful part of the day." A lazy smile creeps along Haven’s lips as she places her hand heavily on my knee. "You know, my Granddad used to wake me up early every morning before school just to watch the sun peek above the tree line." A memory of his face and the happiness he had at such an early hour in the day makes my heart hurt a bit. God, I miss him. "Yeah…he'd tell me, 'No man would ever need a cup of joe if he just sat outside and watched the sunrise. It is the world's way of waking our lazy bones up and filling us with enough energy to get us through the day.'"
"I love that," she says, smiling up at the sun. "Your Granddad sounds like a smart man." Haven sits up beside me, itching at the arm that was clearly not tucked under the blanket. It's covered in mosquito bites, just as I warned her. I have a feeling she won't mention it, though. It would be admitting I was right, and from what I know about her, I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon. "It's really breathtaking." She’s still looking up into the sky, now with her hand cupped over her eyes. "It's so bright, it's almost hard to look at it."
That's kind of how I felt about you the first time we came here.
