But it doesn’t exactly feel like that. It feels like I’m supposed to know who I am right this moment.
“Clem’s leaving me,” I tell her. “She’s going to Georgia.”
She nods, eyeing me from over the rim of her coffee cup. “It won’t be easy to see you two apart.”
“So I guess I’m the only one who didn’t know.” I want to be angry at Grammy, but every effort to muster my disappointment fails.
“She didn’t know how to break the news. I swear, the girl was losing sleep over it.”
“We tell each other everything,” I say, my voice catching on that last syllable.
Grammy is silent for a moment. “Maybe you don’t. And maybe you shouldn’t.”
My mouth snaps open. She’s wrong. We do tell each other every—well, maybe not everything. And, in reality, I don’t want her to knoweverything. I think about her andHannah and her closed bedroom door.Nope.I definitely don’t want to know everything.
“Fine,” I say, even though it is very much not fine. Nothing about this is fine! “But this is an awfully big thing to leave out. I just... I thought we’d live together until we got married and then we’d be next-door neighbors and then our spouses would die before us and then we’d both die watching our favorite TV shows and then we’d all be buried in the Brewer family plot until we became one giant clump of dirt.”
Grammy laughs. “Well, as lovely as that sounds... I don’t think you’re really taking into account what’s best for Clem. Or for you!”
“Can we please talk about literally anything else?” I ask.
Cleo pops up from between the flower beds. “Oh my goodness, I watched the first few episodes of that television show you and Clem are always talking about? The one where winter is coming or what have you?”
“Game of Thrones!” I say. I’m on my third rewatch and am still reeling from the last season. “Well, you’re, like, way late to the party, but welcome to the game of thrones! When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” I quote back to her.
But her only response is her forehead wrinkling in confusion.
Bernadette steps out onto the porch, still in her lavender housecoat with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. “Are y’all talking about that throne game show?” She sits in therocker next to Grammy. “You know, Peter tried getting me into that show when we were seeing each other and I couldn’t get past the incest.”
Grammy huffs. “There she goes again. You dated a thirty-eight-year-old manonce. Once! And now you’ll never stop talking about it! Peter this. Peter that. Someone mentions any little thing and somehow it’s related to Peter.”
I groan. “No, you’ve got to stick with it. You haven’t even gotten to the mother of dragons. You haven’t even seen Cersei in all of her awful glory!”
Bernadette rolls her eyes. “Peter and I were a brief flickering flame, but we left each other scorched. Forever changed, really.”
“I really didn’t need to know that,” I tell her, but it feels good to come here and find these three women being their regular selves. My life might be upside down, but things are still normal somewhere.
“Well,” says Cleo as she dives back into the bushes. “I found the show quite riveting, so I’ll be watching and I don’t want any spoilings.”
“Spoilers,” I tell her.
We spend the rest of the morning outside, talking shit about their neighbors and hearing about their next great big adventure, a trip to Palm Springs this summer. I try not to think too much about how nearly all my favorite people are three to four times my age.
“I’m so close to figuring it out,” I say. On the floor, surrounding me in a semicircle, are the pieces of Grammy’s old doorbell and her new doorbell. “I don’t get how it didn’t work.”
“Does it have something to do with the password I set up on my iPad?” asks Grammy. “Or maybe if I restart my phone?”
I shake my head, not bothering to explain that the problem is the video doorbell and not her many devices it should link to.
The front door creaks open and Clem tiptoes through the doorway.
“Grammy called me,” she immediately says in defense.
I look over to Grammy as she walks past me with a basket of laundry. “Traitor.”
“I need a doorbell,” she calls over her shoulder. “And you two need to come to a truce.”
I turn to Clem as she sits down beside me. “I’ve installed and uninstalled it twice. Your problem now.”
