Page 70 of I'll Carry You

“I’m going to tell her.” The acid in the back of his throat was back. It’d been there each time he thought of this subject. Which was often.

“I can’t pretend to faint every time you need to tell the girl something you know. Which, by the way, you still haven’t thanked me for. What’d you think of my performance? I think I should get an Oscar, no?”

“It was brilliant, Mildred,” he deadpanned. “I still haven’t decided if I’m actually thankful for that, by the way.”

“No? Seems to me she’s still running around with you, so it couldn’t have done much harm.”

She was right, in a way. The sex had only gotten better, but by not telling Jen the whole truth that night, he’d delayed the inevitable. “I want to ask her to marry me. I’ll explain about the inheritance then—and I’m hoping that since we’ve deepened our relationship, it’ll be enough to get us through any problems that might arise.”

“Marry you!” Mildred cackled with a piece of crabmeat clinging to her lips. She shoved it into her mouth with the edge of her forefinger. “You think it will be ‘enough to get us through any problems that might arise.’ And here I thought you were the smart grandson.”

Jason narrowed his gaze. “It’s my best shot.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt, his gaze traveling over the nearby restaurant patrons. The restaurant was a small family-type place, where tables were close enough that someone could easily eavesdrop on their conversation. Not quite the privacy he wanted. The jangle of silverware and dishes and low conversations filled his ears.

She shook her head. “You really know squat about women, don’t you?” She leaned forward and hissed, “I don’t care how magical your penis is, son. She’s never going to trust you again.”

This time, he felt his face grow hot. He’d never met an old lady that talked like this. “Is that really necessary?”

“I am who I am, Jason. Your grandfather thought I was a coarse, trashy woman, and I loved every second of making that pig squirm. So maybe I leaned into it a bit. I’m too old to change now.”

“And the ladies from your church are fine with this?”

She tossed up her hands. “Who knows? That’s why I go to church, right? Forgiveness and such.” She wagged a finger at him. “Which is saying more than you. Who knows when you last stepped into a church. And now you’re dragging that poor Klein girl right into temptation with you.”

“I said I wanted to marry her.” Jason’s fist curled at his side. Why did she have to be like this? He’d felt they’d gotten somewhere the last time they had a genuine conversation. And now here she was, putting on a show again. She was exhausting.

“And I said that ship has sailed. The cat’s out of the bag. The cow is out of the barn. Elvis has left the building. Pandora’s box—”

“I get it.” Jason mowed her down with a cutting look.

She took another bite of her sandwich. “I get carried away sometimes.”

“You don’t say.” He was forgetting why he’d asked her to lunch in the first place.

Mildred adjusted the strand of pearls around her neck. “My Martha enjoyed performing, too. You know that’s how your father met her, didn’t you?”

He picked up his burger with both hands. “No, I didn’t.” He knew little about how his parents had met.

“She was singing in a band in her high school. They won a regional award and went on to a national competition. One where hoity-toity schools like the one your father went to mixed with the kids from small towns like Brandywood. Can’t recall the name of it right now, but it doesn’t matter. Your mother was a real artist, you know. Always painting and singing and playing the violin.”

No, he didn’t know. He never recalled her singing or playing the violin. Not once. Painting, occasionally, but never in front of him. Of course, she’d spent the last year of her life shut behind a door.

Her straw slurped in her tea. “Anyhow, your father heard her singing.” She covered her heart with one hand and closed her eyes exaggeratedly, swaying. “Fell in love. Which is apparently what you Cavanaugh men do when you see a woman you like. Your grandpa John courted me properly. Took me out for a full year before asking my daddy to marry me.”

His mouth curved in a smile. His father had fallen for his mother that quickly. “And then what?”

“And then your father stole her from me, that’s what. Martha came home telling me how she was in love. Instead of going to the local college, she graduated a few weeks later and eloped. And that was that. I lost my baby girl.” Mildred’s voice dropped, and she lost the joyful expression in her eyes. “After that, every time I wanted to see her, I had to make an appointment. She was young and vulnerable. Just turned eighteen. Your grandfather made that new identity for her, and she would have twisted herself up into a pretzel trying to please him—and your father.”

Eighteen?Huh. He’d never thought about how young his parents were when they’d gotten married. But the implication that his mother had been some shallow, immature, and uncaring daughter who had abandoned her parents bothered him. “There must have been some other reason she didn’t mind leaving her life behind.” He bit into the hamburger, then chewed slowly, staring at Mildred analytically.

Mildred’s eyes grew teary. “If you’re implying I didn’t love my daughter enough, you can stop right there.” She glared. “I’d kick you under the table if it didn’t mean I might break my toe. Your mother was the apple of her daddy’s eye. She couldn’t do a single thing wrong. That man died of a broken heart after she left.”

Jason swallowed. Her words reminded him of his own thoughts about his mother the other day. “I wasn’t trying to imply you were a negligent mother.”

“That house I live in was the house she grew up in, darling. Not too much to look at, is it? We didn’t have much—always struggled. And then your father came by and the world he took her into—jets to Iceland and weeks in Bora Bora or Hawaii. Days spent buying whatever she wanted, doing anything she wanted. Never having to worry.” Mildred sighed. “And before all that glimmer wore off, she had you boys. She really needed nothing else. Your father adored her, and she loved you boys. Gosh, did she love you.”

So that was it? His mother just left without looking back? “Didn’t she try to come back at all? To visit?”

“At first.” Mildred rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, dusting the crumbs off her fingers. “Then each time she came, she seemed to get more uncomfortable with home. First, she didn’t want to sleep there. She’d book a hotel a whole hour away just because they had sheets with the right thread count. Tried to send people to fix things around the house—poor John just felt awful when she did that.”