“…thank you so much for helping John and I. We couldn’t have made this month’s rent without you.”
The lady smiled. “What’s the point of making all this money if I can’t use it to help people in need?”
She looked over her shoulder, spotted the car, and said, “Karen, call me if you ever need anything else. Promise me.”
Karen did, then the old lady grabbed me by the hand and led me outside.
The man driving got out and had the car door open before we’d gotten to the door, and we both slid inside.
When the door closed behind us, the man said, “Where to, ma’am?”
“Home.”
It took us ten minutes to get there, and when we arrived, my heart was in my throat.
“Holy crap,” I breathed.
“It’s large and ostentatious, isn’t it?” she asked. “I live in the mother-in-law suite around the back of the house. My son and his wife, as well as his two children, live in the main house. It was too much for me when I got older and the kids left. After my husband died, I just couldn’t bear to be there alone any longer.”
“How many rooms does it have?” I wondered. “Seventy?”
“Nineteen.” The old woman rolled her eyes. “Let’s go.”
She caught my hand again and led me out of the door that was once again opened by the man that’d driven, and tugged me along a gorgeously paved path spot free of snow despite the fact that it was still snowing, and straight to her front door.
“Now, what do you want to eat?”
She led me into the small cottage that was cozy and warm, and straight to a blanket that was on the back of the couch.
She wrapped it around my shoulders and stared at me with her warm honey eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t know why, but everything just poured out.
Everything.
My hate for my dad. My mother doing nothing to protect me. The absolute certainty that my twin could never know what my dad did to me on a regular basis.
Everything, I just laid it all at her feet.
“Blood does not make a family,” she said quietly. “Bonds, do. Promises given and kept. Love. Acceptance. Presence. Showing up when they’re not expected to. That all makes a family. Not some stupid, wannabe notion that blood makes you so.” She looked at something outside the window, and her mouth tipped up but her face went soft. “See that boy out there?”
I looked out the window. “Yeah?”
And boy, did I.
That boy was…whoa.
I’d never in my life seen someone so beautiful.
He was tall for his age. Black hair. Dark-brown eyes. Bronzed skin. Muscles.
He was in the process of throwing a ball for a svelte-looking black lab that looked like he’d play for hours and hours upon end.
“That’s my grandson,” she said. “We share no blood. His mother cheated on my son, had a baby with some man that nobody even knew well. Yet, that boy is my grandson. He’s the apple of my eye. The best thing that’s ever happened to my son. Yet, again, we carry no shared DNA.”
My heart ached. “And y’all just took him in?”
