Tessa McDermid - Family Stories (28 page)

When she was little, she'd been jealous of Preston, stomping her foot or pouting whenever her mother, Kate, left to take him to one of his activities. Her father had reminded her that he was always at her soccer games because he was the coach. "Somebody has to take your brother to his activities," her father had said. "And since I have to be at your games, your mother does that. Doesn't mean she loves you less. You'll have your turn with her when you're older."

He'd been right. Her mom was traveling with her dad for a few weeks, since they were al out of school, but when she was home, she and Hannah were together a lot, talking about col eges, looking at clothes, working on craft projects. The beaded bracelets they made were a hit at her high school, and Hannah sold every one she brought in.

She sighed. Her mom would be able to unravel the mystery. She could always see into the heart of a problem.

"I could cal her," Hannah murmured to herself. "Talk to her for a little bit."

She shut her bedroom door and climbed onto the bed, digging her cel phone out of her pocket. Her mother answered on the second ring.

"Hi, Hannah! Everything okay?"

Tears wel ed up in Hannah's eyes and she blinked them impatiently away. She wasn't a baby, crying for her mother. Every summer they spent at least two weeks with her grandmother. She'd never been homesick before.

"Yeah, we're fine."

"Mom said you're trying to organize a party for G.G. and Grandpa Frank."

"I was. But nobody wants to have a party. They al say G.G. is too tired. But I don't think that's the real reason."

"Hold on a minute, sweetie."

She waited while her mother spoke to someone. She could hear the roar of the waves and people shouting.

"Are you on the beach?" she asked when her mother came back.

"I am. Your father had some meetings this morning and I couldn't stay cooped up in that hotel another minute.

I was regretting that I never took a lifeguarding job at a beach. Pools were fine but the ocean...that would've been fun."

Hannah giggled at the image of her mother sitting in a beach hut or on one of those towers, waiting to rescue someone.

"I was a good lifeguard," Kate sputtered over the line. "Your grandma taught me herself."

"I'm sure you were, Mom. I was just picturing you in a life guard outfit."

"Your father is very appreciative of me in a swimsuit."

Hannah shuddered. "Mom! Don't tel me stuff like that."

Her mother chuckled. "Then don't act like your mother's nothing but a dried-up old hag."

"I never said that!"

"Humph. It was implied. Now why did you cal ?"

Hannah hesitated. Hearing her mother's no-nonsense voice was making her rethink al her efforts.

But her curiosity wouldn't rest. "I wondered if you know why G.G. doesn't want a party."

Silence came over the line. Hannah could imagine her mother's face, her brow creased and her lips slightly parted as she worked out how to answer or not answer the question.

"I think the others might be right. She may be too tired for al the fuss."

The same old excuse everyone was giving her. "But she's never tired," Hannah argued.

"Honey, G.G. isn't a young woman anymore. She needs to take it easy."

"They should celebrate their anniversary," she said stubbornly. "They've been together for ages!"

And with al that talk about them being tired and older, she was afraid they might not have many more years left.

They deserved a party. They had lived their wedding vows, day after day, weathering al kinds of setbacks.

Supporting each other and their family together for seventy-five years.

And stil smitten with each other.

She didn't say any more about the party to her mother. She ended the conversation after they'd chatted about plans for September and the new school year. Her senior year. She stared around the room. The answer wasn't in the col ection of pictures and magazines she had found.

The answer was with G.G. and Grandpa Frank.

**********

Chapter 20

Lincoln, Iowa

1982

"Sometimes you have no choice." Marian poured tea into three cups and served Kate and then Marcia. The two young women added milk to theirs, Marcia dropping in a spoonful of sugar.

"I hate to tel Mom." Marcia sat in the wingback chair, her long legs tucked beneath her. The delicate china wobbled and she careful y set it on the side table. "I can't stop shaking. I stil can't believe it's over." Her eyes were red-rimmed. "Owen was so matter-of-fact about it, and here I am, al those years of my life gone."

Kate picked up the cup. She held it to Marcia's lips. "Drink."

Marcia swallowed two sips and pul ed back. "What am I going to do?"

"He's such a handsome boy." Marian settled the lap rug around her knees. The afternoon had a slight chil , but Kate could barely remember a time when Grandma didn't have her rug around her legs.

"That sturdy jaw and ful lips. And those eyes. A girl would kil for lashes like his."

"Grandma!" Marcia's squeak was close to her normal voice.

Marian shrugged. "He was cute. Stil is. Just goes to show that outward appearances can hide secrets."

"I thought we'd be married forever, that I'd grow old with hint like you and Grandpa."

"Humph." Marian sipped her tea.

Kate grinned. "She didn't mean you were old, Grandma, just that you and Grandpa have been through a lot—

and you're stil together."

"We have been through a lot." Marian's head fel back, and she stared at the ceiling, her eyes glazing over.

Kate waited, knowing her grandmother was reliving her past, Sometimes she'd resurface and tel them stories, fil ing in the gaps their mothers had left in their storytelling.

"Your grandfather and I have had our share of troubles." She picked up a cookie from the tea tray and held it between her fingers. Her worn wedding band winked in the afternoon sunlight. "We left each other a time or two." Her lips curved up in a reminiscent smile. "But never for long. And we always came back."

"This is different from an argument, Grandma."

Kate couldn't stand to hear the hurt in her cousin's voice.

"I realize that." Marian put her cup and saucer on the table. She took Marcia's hands in hers. "You have no choice, my dear. This can't be worked out with an apology and some flowers. You have to be strong, honey, watch him leave, and then tel your mother. She'll be upset but when she learns the reason, she'll be fine. She loves you. She wants you to be happy."

"I don't know if I'll ever be." Marcia's lips quivered. "I can't... I can't believe it's over. Seven years of marriage and I turn out to be his best friend."

Marian handed her the cookie she'd been holding, her usual method of consoling weeping grandchildren.

Marcia bit into it, more out of habit than conscious thought.

"You're making the right decision," Kate said softly. They had talked late into the night, tears flowing freely from both. She had brought her to Marian's house for tea, counting on their grandmother's wisdom and the routine of tea and cookies to give Marcia a sense of normalcy.

"He's moving away." Her words were muffled around the cookie.

Marian nodded. "Good. This town is too smal for him to survive once word gets out."

"I just don't understand how he could do this to you!" Kate's voice rose in the indignation she had shown when Marcia had first told her Owen wanted a divorce.

"He didn't know. He hoped I could change him, that maybe he wasn't...gay." Her voice staggered over the word.

Marian passed her a tissue to mop the streaming flow of tears. "If anyone could change a man, it would be you, Marcia."

One corner of Marcia's mouth turned up. "Thank you."

"She's right." Kate smiled at her cousin. Marcia had always been beautiful, inheriting her mother's golden curls instead of her father's red hair. Her skin was clear, without a single freckle or even a pimple, and the summer before she'd entered high school, she'd developed a figure that had every boy drooling.

"Wel , I guess that wasn't enough." She wiped her eyes and tossed the tissue into the trash can.

Kate hugged her. "I'm so sorry."

Marcia stood up, her sweater clinging to her curves, her jeans j molded to her hips. Kate was comfortable in her own body now, the teenage jealousy of her cousin a thing of the past, but she couldn't prevent a fleeting stab of satisfaction that her cousin's life wasn't picture-perfect.

"Maybe we're not meant to be married," Marcia said.

Kate frowned. "What?"

"You and Max. Me and Owen. Mom." Aunt Alice was dating yet another successful businessman with no sign of settling down. "Except for Aunt Margaret and Grandma, the women in our family haven't had much luck with love."

"My mom and dad were very happy together."

Marcia swooped down and gave her a big hug. "Oh, I didn't mean to bring up your dad. I'm sorry, Kate, I am."

Kate brushed away the tears clinging to her eyelashes. Even after al this time, she couldn't think of her broad-shouldered father, his eyes alight with laughter, without tearing up. She didn't know if it would ever get easier to accept that he was gone from their lives forever.

"Wel , I'm not giving up on happily-ever-after just yet." Kate was proud of how firm her voice sounded.

"I'm putting it on hold for a while." Marcia bent down and kissed Marian's cheek. "Thank you, Grandma, for listening. I'm going to Mom's house, while I stil have your courage inside me."

"Do you want me to go with you?" Kate wasn't sure she could handle another emotional scene, but her cousin had been there for her when Max broke off their engagement.

Marcia shook her head. "No. I can do this."

The front door closed softly behind her. "She'll leave, too," Marian said.

Kate swung around to face her grandmother. "No, she won't!"

Marian nodded. "Yes. She won't be able to handle the gossip. At least nurses are always in demand. She can go anywhere."

"It's so unfair. Her family's here, her friends." Kate vaulted to her feet and paced around the room. "I could just kil Owen. He told her he thought he was gay back in high school. He didn't want his father to find out. Poor Marcia." She sighed. "Poor Owen, too."

"She'll survive. You girls will both survive." Marian gathered up the tea things and Kate hurried to her side.

"We're strong women, Kate Sanders. Don't forget that. The women in this family have weathered a lot of trials.

You and Marcia will make it."

Kate fol owed her into the kitchen she had visited more times than she could count. As a little girl sitting quietly on the bench against the wal , she'd often listened to family stories—until someone noticed her and sent her out of the room. Now she was adding her own chapters.

"Maybe I should give up on men, Grandma." She ran soapy water in the sink and careful y washed a teacup before swishing it in the rinse water.

Marian chuckled. "Real y?" She took the cup and dried it with a flowered tea towel Kate had embroidered for her years before.

A warm glow spread through Kate at the ritual. The tea towels were only for drying the good china; Marian had declared al those Christmases ago that they were too pretty, too special, to be used for everyday drying. Kate had bloomed under her attention, her love.

She smiled at her grandmother and rinsed the third teacup. "Real y. And since I've already washed the cups, you can't read my tea leaves and predict a tal , dark and handsome man in my future. Women don't need a man to be complete anymore, Grandma. You said yourself we can make it on our own."

Marian deposited the last cup on the rack. "Perhaps. But you'll miss so much." She raised her eyebrows at Kate's sarcastic laugh. "Life is richer when you share it with someone."

She sat down in a kitchen chair, the towel caught between her hands. "I wasn't always so wise about this, Kate. I was stubborn, expected my own way a lot during the early days of our marriage."

Kate sat across from her grandmother. They were alone in the house for another hour, until Grandpa Frank closed the shop. A lot could be shared in an hour.

"My father—your great-grandpa—was strict, a minister in a smal town. When your grandpa came along, I assumed he knew al about having a good time. And I had to get out of that little town."

Her eyes had that faraway look again. "I don't know now if I loved your grandfather the way I should have when we married. If I had, I probably wouldn't have been so restless. I thought he should make me happy. I didn't realize I had to find my own path but that we could walk on it together."

She patted Kate's hand and stood up. Kate knew she was going into her bedroom, where she'd freshen her makeup before Frank came home. It was another ritual she'd observed over the years. "Thank goodness your grandpa stayed with me. We may have wasted some of our years together but now..." She kissed Kate's cheek. "Now my greatest wish is that you and your cousin will experience the same happiness I shared with your grandfather"

Chapter 21

Lincoln, Iowa

September 1984

Kate strol ed around her friend's neatly furnished living room, pausing at the bookshelf to scan the tides. "Did you finish the book we're reading for book club?"

"No." Nancy's voice came from the smal bedroom. "We cannot let Barb pick any more tides. Her choices are always so dreary."

"They're supposed to enlighten us, make us smarter." Kate tapped the velvety leaf of an African violet on the middle shelf. "Schoolteachers like us need that, you know."

A snort of laughter answered her and she smiled. She'd met Nancy two years earlier, just after Marcia's departure from Lincoln. Nancy had been hired on at her elementary school, and they'd quickly discovered a common interest in books. Nancy had formed the book club they attended twice a month. The group was going to dinner tonight and then to a movie based on one of the earlier books they'd discussed.

The doorbel rang. "Would you get that, Kate?" Nancy cal ed from the bedroom. "I'm expecting a package and it was probably delivered to my neighbor."