“Malene, I’m trying real hard not to be angry with you, but I will admit that I’m having a difficult time with that right about now.”
“I’m sure you are. Okay. Yes, that man is still alive.”
And here it was, the very bottom of the truth barrel. We were scraping the last dregs from it, dregs that should have been released a long time ago.
But as there was no reason to cry over spilled milk, I might as well press on. “I know who it is.”
Her eyes widened. “You do?”
“It’s not hard to figure out. There’s only one man in this entire town that you hate enough to have married and then remained married to so that you could torture him every day of his life.”
“I don’t know about that,” she argued.
“It’s true,” Lady said. “You like to torture, just like I’m gonna do to that cat when I get ahold of it.”
“Lady,” I chastised. “You be nice.”
She smacked her lips before settling her head back on my leg. “If I must.”
Hesitation danced in Malene’s eyes. “Who is it, then?”
I exhaled, gathering up my courage, before replying. “Why, it’s Willard Gandy. You’re married to him, and he’s my grandfather.”
Chapter 24
Malene looked embarrassed. “Yes, well, that might be the truth.”
I exhaled a deep breath. All of this had been kept from me. It was all information that I had deserved to know. Hadn’t I done the exact thing to Rufus by keeping his past from him? I knew Malene and Willard as my friends, not my grandparents. How much time had I wasted not getting to know them?
“Why?” I whispered, the words ghosts in my throat. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? Why didn’t he tell me?”
Malene shook her head. “He went along with my wishes. I didn’t want you to know, so he didn’t say a word. Not until I told him it was okay, that is.”
“But…” I had to wrap my brain around this when all I wanted to do was rake my fingers down my face and jump through her front window. “But I already know about you. Why didn’t you let me find out about him?”
Malene twisted a gold ring on her finger. “Because I just couldn’t. It was my fault. I’m sorry, Clem. That man drives me crazy, and just once I wanted to have something over him that was all mine.”
Sadness filled me. “Do you hate him so much that you’d keep me from him?”
Malene’s eyes watered. Before one tear could fall onto her designer blouse, she plucked a tissue from a box and draped it under her eyes. “I dislike him that much, yes.”
Now I was irritated. “Well, it’s time you learned to not hate quite so much. He’s my grandfather, and I expect to have a relationship with him. I don’t understand why you don’t like him to begin with. What did he ever do to you to hurt you?”
Malene sniffed. “That’s none of your business. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, anyway. You just keep your nose in your own lane.”
“Is that a saying?” Lady asked.
I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”
Malene waved her hand. “Well, who cares? All I’m saying is that it’s none of your concern why I have problems with Willard. They’re our problems—not yours.”
“But they affected the fact that you never told me.”
“Perhaps they did.”
“So what’s your beef with him?”
Her lips pursed, and her words came out hard. “What happened between us is none of your business.”
