Page 48 of Cashmere Ruin

At the mention of my grandmother, I stop rummaging through the suitcase. “Yeah?” I rasp.

“One of a kind,” Elias confirms. “And she worked too much, but you could never tell her that.”

I find myself laughing. “I definitely remember that part. She was always hunched over some dress or another.”

“Give your kid a few years—she’ll be saying the same about you.”

My smile fades a bit. For some reason, it’s sad to think about—what May will think of me. I’m already failing her so much, between my focus on work and my drama with her dad…

The dad you tried to take her from, a nasty voice inside of me whispers.Don’t forget that.

Something must show on my face, because I feel Elias’s warm hand on my shoulder. “Sorry,” I say quickly. “Just spaced out a bit.”

“Mhmm,” he hums, unconvinced. “You know, this all reminds me of a story.”

“A story?”

“About your grandmother.”

We settle at the table, just the two of us. Charlie’s still on the couch, making faces at the baby while Mr. Buttons circles around them suspiciously.

“It was the day she brought you home,” Elias continues. “The day shereallybrought you home. To stay.”

“You were there?” I frown.

“You wouldn’t remember. You were already asleep. Maia asked me to come over—I thought something had happened. I got there as fast as I could. When I did, she offered me a cup of tea.”

“That’s her, alright.”

“Sure was.” He laughs with me. “You’d passed out on the couch after crying yourself to sleep. You had this checkered blanketover you; it dwarfed you. That night, Maia confessed she didn’t want to give you back.”

“What? I thought my parents agreed that it was…”

“They did,” he amends quickly. “Thenextday, when she asked them. But she hadn’t asked yet. She knew she wanted to keep you, but she was… scared.”

Scared?That doesn’t sound like my grandma. Maia was smart, confident, funny… and stronger than anyone I’d ever known. She feared nothing.

“Of what?” I ask.

“Of failing you.”

On the other side of the room, Charlie laughs out loud. Whatever he’s doing, it makes May laugh, too.

“Failing me?” I blink. “Elias, shesavedme.”

“But she didn’t know that yet,” he replies. “She didn’t know she could. You have to remember that Maia was never actually a mother. She was a stepmom first, and you know how thatwent.”

I give a grim nod. “My dad hated her.”

“Mhmm.”

Suddenly, the proverbial lightbulb goes off in my head. “Wait—is that what she was afraid of? That I’d hate her, too?”

I can’t believe this. Maia was the first good thing to happen to me: she was my family.Not by blood, but by choice. And she thought…?

As if reading my thoughts, Elias gives me a reassuring smile. “It’s hard to understand what she was feeling back then. She wanted to be your grandmother so badly, but she had no idea if she could actually pull it off.”

“Because she’d never done it before,” I fill in.