Life Without You (30 page)

“Alright! I was just trying to paint you a picture, okay? I have baby brain,” she sniffed.

“I hate to tell you this, Bette, but I think that only happens to women who are actually pregnant.”

“Whatever. I finally get my baby, Dellie. Don’t steal my thunder,” she shot back, though I could hear the smile in her voice. “
Anyway
, he asked me what I would get, if I could buy anything in the store.”

“And I’m sure that wasn’t the least bit confusing,” I said, knowing how much the situation would have puzzled me. Maybe even upset me, if I was in the position that Bette was in, having given up on the possibility of a family altogether. It might have seemed like an insensitive question or even some kind of cruel joke.

“It was,” she conceded. “Extremely. Actually, I started to yell at him, right there in the middle of the store.”

Now
there
was the Bette I knew.

“You didn’t!”

“No, I really did. Unfortunately, one of the League ladies owns the store, so she got an earful before Steve managed to push me back out the door.” She laughed.

“And I’m sure that’s going to do great things for your chances of getting voted onto the committee like you were wanting to,” I said helpfully. Chances were, though, that at this point, Bette was beyond caring, she was so happy.

“You’re probably right, but I really don’t give two shakes anymore about the League and looking good for them. None of those women is nearly as squeaky clean as they’d like you to think, so they can all shove it.”

I smiled, catching the eye of a creepy-looking guy at a table parallel to mine and dropping my gaze quickly, hoping he didn’t think I was trying to flirt with him. “Uh-huh, well. I’ve never been League material; you know how I feel about that. Welcome to the Sisterhood of the Socially Unfit, my friend. Your sash and membership kit are in the mail.”

Bette laughed. “Does it come with alcohol? Lord knows I could use some. Not to self-medicate with, though. To celebrate with! I feel like throwing a party!” she whooped.

I took my phone away from my ear, hoping this phone call wouldn’t leave my hearing permanently damaged. “You should, Bette,” I said, once I felt reasonably sure that my eardrums were safe for the time being. “This has all been so much for you two to deal with, and now you’re finally getting your happy story out of it. That deserves some major fireworks, my friend.” I smiled, picturing Bette going into full-on party mode. “Wait until I get back, though?”

“Of course! And I know it’s early to ask, Dellie, but will you be her godmother?”

I felt the sting of tears in my nose.

“You want me to be her godmother?” I asked, feeling touched beyond words. Once upon a time we had talked about such things, but after all the complications and then me with my…issues, I’d kind of given up on the thought. I hardly felt deserving of the title.

“Who else would I want, sweetie? You’re my best friend!”

“I know, but—” I paused, feeling choked by the words. “I’m so screwed up, Bette. I have no business being anybody’s godmother. I’m hardly a role model.”

Bette laughed. “None of us is, Dellie. Yes, you’re having problems; but you’re also trying to work on those. I love you, and I know that you’ll love this baby when she comes. So I
want
you to be her godmother. And we want you to be there for her, if something ever happens to us” she said, her voice thick with genuine emotion. “Besides, I know this won’t be your first time at the rodeo. Aren’t you already a godmother to Charlie’s oldest?”

“Yes, but I’m her only sister. I think I kind of won that role by default, not because I’m such a capable or worthy human being,” I pointed out.

“You are, though, Dellie. You’ve just lost so much confidence that you don’t think you are. So stop protesting and say yes.”

“What about Steve’s sister-in-law? You don’t think she’d expect to be the baby’s godmother?” It was a reasonable enough question, considering the fact that she came with the added benefit of already being a mother herself, which also meant she knew how to raise children. Or so was the hope.

“Steve’s sister-in-law is perfectly lovely, but I’m not so sure she and Bradley are the people we’d want to raise our children, should the need arise. And besides, they live in Oregon, away from both of our families. We’re thinking Mason would make a nice godfather,” she added.

Mason was Steve’s best friend, single and quite nice-looking, if I was perfectly honest. They’d even tried fixing us up a few years ago, long before I’d met the man I had married, but nothing had come of it. Which was kind of a shame, because he really was a nice guy. Too nice, I’d thought at the time. It had made him seem almost unexciting, and what I had so stupidly been seeking at that point in my life was someone who was exciting and slightly dangerous.

I guess I’d gotten the dangerous part, hadn’t I?

Now, the thought of nice and unexciting seemed to hold a certain amount of appeal.

What was so wrong with
nice
?

“I’d be honored, Bette,” I said at last, trying to refocus my attention. No use crying over the what-ifs.

“Oh, I’m glad! And you can help me shop, when you come home. I can’t wait until you get here—I’ve missed you, you know that?”

I smiled. “I’ve missed you, too. And I’ll be glad to be home again. This trip has been good for me, made me think about a lot. And there are still a few things that I feel like I need to take care of before I leave, but I’ve really missed all of you.”

“But me, most of all, of course.”

“Oh, no question, Bette. No question.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Grandpa, do you still have those coloring books and crayons that Grammie always kept to use for ideas when she was decorating cakes?” I asked later that evening, after we’d cleared the remnants of our dinner and wandered into the den to see what might be of interest on TV. It was a routine that had become comforting, in a way. One that seemed to soothe both of us, one that seemed to allow us to form a deeper connection than we’d had before, even though we weren’t saying much to one another. We were satisfied with just being together, commenting on things that caught our attention as they floated past on the screen or having short discussions on things that might have been happening in our day. Grandpa still hadn’t apologized for the way he’d reacted the other night when I’d brought up Annabelle and the cake server; but he hadn’t raised the subject again, and he wasn’t showing any signs of still carrying around any sort of anger with me. In fact, it was as if the whole discussion had never even happened.

Much as I would have liked some resolution, I knew I was likely going to have to make my own peace with the fact that he and Annabelle would never really call a truce. That was just the way things were. He didn’t see what I did, and I was ill-prepared to be the one who suddenly opened his eyes to it. All I could do was hope that we would be able to enjoy this last week together without having any more confrontations; and that maybe, just maybe, something I had said would work on him—his head and his heart—over time, and that it would allow him to soften toward the woman he seemed to hold in such contempt.

“I think they’re in the one of the drawers in the china cabinet. Why?” he asked, not looking away from the screen as he flipped through the channels.

I shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t think I was silly when I said what I was going to say next. “I don’t know. Just feel like coloring.”

He nodded. “Check the china cabinet,” he repeated.

I uncurled myself from the recliner and padded my way down the hall, into the dining room that was never, ever used for anything but a pass-through, a catch-all space for china cabinets and a dining table that had always been like the holding station for Grammie’s cakes in different stages of their preparation—some having only recently been removed from the oven and tipped out onto their cooling rack; some in the midst of their various stages of frosting; some fully completed and awaiting their final destination.

This
was not the heart of the home. Instead, its dual chambers were the small kitchen with its worn linoleum floor and round wooden table that had seen so many meals and seemed, like magic, to always be able to hold the people gathered around it, whether they numbered two or ten; and the den, where the remains of the day were passed and where, every weekday afternoon without fail, Grammie would watch with rapt attention as the people in her “stories” would live their dramatic and unbelievable lives and grow old along with those who watched them during their years on camera.

I pulled out the top drawer on the china cabinet to my left, hoping it wouldn’t take me long to locate what I was looking for, wondering if I would find anything interesting along the way. Part of me wanted to do a little nosing around, rifling through these long-neglected spaces to see what treasures I might unexpectedly unearth, while the other part of me felt as though poking around more than necessary was wrong.

I decided to take the high road and look only until I found what I had come for: the coloring books and crayons that Grammie had always kept on hand to use when she was making a birthday cake. She’d never gotten into the use of computers, always relying instead on pictures from coloring books when she needed to execute a character cake, first drawing the image on rice paper before applying it to an unadorned layer of crumb frosting. She’d used that as a guide as she painstakingly filled in with colored buttercream, bringing the picture to life with every squeeze of her pastry bag. The benefit of her process for her grandchildren, at least, was the fact that we could pretty much count on the fact that there would be something of interest to color, whether it was Barbies or race cars, so even rainy days spent inside were never boring.

The drawer had taken a fair amount of tugging, so long had it been since it had last been opened, and it was extremely packed. I shoved and lifted various bits and baubles and random junk until I could see that nothing there would be of help, moving down to the next drawer and then the next. In the bottom drawer, I hit pay dirt, happy to see, at last, a stack of coloring books that had obviously seen better days and a box of crayons to match. I flipped through the top few to see if any of the pages were still uncolored—I was well aware that I was hardly the first to be coloring in these books over the years that they had been in this house—and saw that there were, in fact, quite a few colorless pages that needed to be tended to. Still, these particular books weren’t exactly thrilling to me, so I dove in a little deeper to see what else I might find. The very bottom book called out to me like a beacon, full of cheerful little princesses and woodland characters with fat cheeks and furry bodies that begged to be brought to life.

I was just about to replace the stack of coloring books when something stuck to the bottom drawer liner caught my eye, something that, by the looks of it, had been left there and long forgotten.

It was a cream colored, letter-sized envelope that was yellowed with age, the name
Meredith
written out in elegant script across its front.

I carefully separated the envelope from the drawer’s liner and studied it for a moment, wondering who it might be from and who had written whatever was inside.

“Did you find any?” Grandpa’s voice floated in from the den, breaking into my thoughts.

“Yup. Quite a few, actually. Be there in a minute,” I called back, feeling slightly guilty, as though I had been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I put the envelope down on the floor next to me and quickly replaced the cast-off stack of coloring books, still trying to decide what to do with the aging piece of correspondence.

Put it back in the drawer, or take it back to my room for further study?

Or should I show it to Grandpa first?

Why did it seem so interesting to me in the first place? I wondered as I picked it up again off the floor, looking at the handwriting that looped over it.

It seemed almost familiar, but I was having trouble placing it.

More than likely, Grandpa would just dismiss it as something unimportant after all this time and toss it aside without much thought. After all, it had been lost in the recesses of the drawer for who knew how long. It could hardly make a difference now, right? Grammie was gone, and whoever had given it to her—for whatever reason—had probably forgotten long ago about ever putting pen to paper.

So really, it wouldn’t matter if I opened it without asking, right?

“Dellie?”

Right
, I thought, making the decision and shoving it into the coloring book before I scrambled up off the floor. I would look at it later. Right now, it was time to go back to the den and color.

Dear Meredith,

I hope that this gift finds you in good health and that it communicates the extent of my gratitude for the beautiful cake you created. Seeing that cake took my breath away, and it could have not been more perfect had it come from one of the finest bakeries in Richmond. You truly are gifted, and I hope that I might be an encouragement to you to embrace that talent, rather than letting it go unused.

I know that in the past, I have not conducted myself in ways with you that were either respectful of you or befitting a young woman of any class; and for that I can only offer my most sincere apologies. I realize that is far from enough to erase the pain or the damage of the situation, but I hope that you can find it in yourself to forgive me for my part in it. You were hardly deserving of being treated so thoughtlessly, and I will always regret my thoughtlessness.

You have a bright future, Meredith. I hope you see that, and I hope you take advantage of it. Please accept this cake server as a reminder that yours is a natural gift of rare finding, something to be shared and celebrated. Believe in yourself, and believe that you are a woman to be treasured. Think of that every time you use this server, every time you serve someone with your gift. You are special, Meredith, with a special talent that, like the silver of this server, should be polished and allowed to shine.