“Awww.” Lainey smiled. “Isn’t that sweet that he’s so worried? Matt was the same way. He wasn’t happy about the police protection being called off either, but I trust my dad’s instincts. Drystan really is a good guy, Nara. If he asks you, you should say ‘yes.’ He would only ask you to go as a friend. He knows you have a boyfriend.”
“He does?” I stared at her, some of the tension easing out of my shoulders. How did he know? The subject had never come up between us. For all I knew he had a girlfriend back home in Wales.
Lainey shifted the heavy stack of dresses in her arms. “I told him you weren’t going to the dance because your boyfriend couldn’t make it. He thought that was a lame-arsed reason to stay home.”
My eyebrow shot up.
“His words, not mine,” she said, lifting her shoulders.
I really didn’t want to talk about Drystan anymore. With Lainey, distraction always worked, so I grabbed the first two dresses in my size from a silver-and-white themed dress rack. “Okay, we’re here to try on dresses. Let’s do this!”
An hour and a half later, I was completely exhausted, but enjoying myself. For every dress Lainey tried on, she insisted that I do the same. After about the thirtieth dress, she finally found a gorgeous floor-length dress in satin with a sequined halter-style bodice. The color was so pale blue it looked gray, and best of all it complemented her fair complexion.
I was in the process of slipping out of a silver-sequined gown when Lainey’s arm came over the top of the dressing room door, holding a white and silver dress. “Here. One more.”
“But you found your dress...”
Lainey shook the dress. “Please, Nara! It was hidden on a back rack and I’ll bet it’ll be gorgeous on you. Dresses like this only look good on tall people.”
“Five eight isn’t
that
tall,” I said in a disgruntled tone, taking the dress from her.
“You know what I mean. Quit pouting and put it on. I want to see it on you.”
I slipped the soft satin and thin tulle over my head, then quickly zipped up the back. When I turned around to look at myself in the mirror, I was shocked. Holy cow, it was amazing the difference a fitted, strapless bodice could make. I had some awesome cleavage. Though if I wore it like this, I’d feel naked underneath. I’d still wear a strapless bra.
Tiny silver beadwork created a two-inch band across my chest, then the beadwork crisscrossed over the white tulle bodice, enhancing my breasts. Right above the silver band that encircled my waist, diamond cutouts revealed even more skin on my left and right side. Below the fitted waist, a flowing skirt of fine white tulle overlaid a soft satin underlayer that touched my toes. With every movement I made, the skirt flowed in and out of my legs beautifully.
“Well? Let me see!” Lainey insisted. I could literally hear her hopping from foot to foot outside the door.
I stepped out to let her see. “It’s very pretty.”
“Look at your boobs!” Lainey squealed in glee, then quickly lowered her voice when several people in the store turned toward the dressing room section.
My face flamed and I started to cover my chest when she grabbed my hands. “Oh no, you don’t. This dress is stunning on you!” As she looked me over from head to toe, Lainey whispered, “This is exactly how I picture Athena, all Grecian and gorgeous!” Letting go of my hands, she turned me toward the full-length mirror and held my hair up, piling it on top of my head. “Can’t you just see it, Nara? With curls tumbling around your face.”
I smiled. Lainey’s excitement was infectious. “Thanks for making me come. This was fun.”
“You have to get it. It was made for you.”
Maybe for a future event
. I glanced at the tag and my heart nearly stopped. Two hundred and fifty dollars! I thought Lainey’s hundred and seventy-five dollar dress was too much for a one-night event. “Oh, my God, Lainey!” I hiss-whispered. “Why’d you pick the most expensive dress in the store? That’s like offering a dieter chocolate.”
“Because I knew you would do it justice,” she snapped, peering at me in the mirror. “Not many girls could pull off this dress.” She slid her hands across my shoulders. “You have just the right build. Broad shoulders, athletic…” Pulling me back, so I had to bend down to her five-four height, she finished with a wicked grin, “and with fantastic knockers.”
Her last comment made me snicker. As I straightened to my full height, I smiled sadly. “Thanks, but this dress is way out of my league.”
Lainey frowned. “You’re such a party pooper. Go take it off and I’ll put it back.”
While I got dressed, Lainey paid for her dress and bought a pair of matching shoes.
“Want to get some coffee?” she asked as we walked out of the department store into the mall.
I grinned. “Yeah, but let’s get it to go. I need to get my car and go home. If I don’t get the leaves up, Mom’s going to kill me.”
* * *
As soon as I got home, I tried to start the leaf blower, but it just sputtered and immediately cut off. “Lovely,” I murmured as I glanced at the gas reservoir. It was almost empty. Mom was the one who mixed the oil/gas mixture. I didn’t know the ratio, so I’d have to wait for her to do that before I could take care of the leaves. I taped a note on the blower.
Needs fuel
.
Snickering at my reprieve from leaf-blowing duty, I started to head for the stairs when my gaze landed on the glowing light on the dishwasher. The green light mocked me as I tried to walk past it, so I stopped and took the time to put the clean dishes away.
Once I slid the last dish into place on the shelf, I closed the dishwasher, then trotted upstairs with a spring in my step.
Mom might not be happy about the leaves, but she’ll be shocked that I emptied the dishwasher without being asked.
I’d just turned into my room, when I gasped and froze, my heart jerking. Someone was lying on the floor next to my desk.
Chapter Thirteen
As the woman pushed herself up with one hand, while holding her head with the other, realization dawned. “Ohmygod, Gran!” I cried out, rushing to her side to help her sit up. “What happened?”
“Apparently, I fell,” Gran said in a surly voice.
“I know, but…what…” I paused and helped her to her feet. I was afraid to let go of her frail arm. “Can you stand?”
Gran put her hand to her head once more and mumbled, “Maybe I should sit down.”
As soon as I helped her sit on my bed, I fell to my knees again and pushed her gray hair back to see the slight lump on her forehead. “You’ve got a nasty bump. I’m going to get you some ice.”
I was back in less than a minute, pressing a cold compress I’d wrapped in a hand towel gently against her forehead. “Here, hold this on for a few minutes.”
As Gran held the compress on her head, I stared into her bright green eyes. “I’ll take you to a doctor. You might have a concussion.”
Gran waved me off.
I held up two fingers. “How many, Gran?”
“Two,” she grunted.
“Recite ‘Peter Piper.’”
“What?” She scrunched her nose.
“Recite the nursery rhyme, Gran,” I said in a stern voice. “The whole thing.”
She sighed her frustration, then did as I asked.
“Now do this,” I moved my fingers up and down each other like a spider climbing a web, “while saying the ‘Itsy, Bitsy Spider.’”
After she recited the rhyme while performing the hand movements, slowly but flawlessly, she put the compress back on her head. “If you’ll stop giving me concussion tests, I promise to have the doctor at Westminster check me out when you take me back.”
“I guess that’ll have to do.” I frowned, shaking my head at the whole scenario. “How’d you get here? Are you AWOL again?”
“I took a cab.” Gran snickered and pointed to my window. “And I came in through your window. You know, even though you’re on the second floor, you really shouldn’t leave it open. If an old woman like me can get in here…” she began in a lecturing tone.
I was about to speak when my phone rang, Dokken’s “Alone Again.” “Hi, Mom.”
“Your Gran’s gone missing again. I’ve been in a meeting and just got the voicemail the Westminster administrator left.”
Gran was miming in the background, slicing her hand across her neck. I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “She’s right here.”
“She’s with you at home? Is she okay?”
“Yeah, I’m at home. Gran’s bumped her head, but she’s fine—”
“Oh God. I’ll be right home!” Before I could say anything else, Mom hung up.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Gran grumbled. “She’s going to come in here, freak out and insist I go to the hospital.”
“You probably should. I can’t believe you climbed up here into my room—”
“I’ve climbed far taller trees and much harder obstacles in my day. What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I had a key.”
I cracked a smile. Gran’s off-center logic might sound crazy to others, but it was totally Gran. She sounded fine to me. I would back her up about having the doctor at Westminster check her out if Mom tried to insist on the Emergency Room. I cupped her cheek. “If you’re going to keep sneaking out, I’ll give you my spare key so we don’t have to worry about you freezing to death or breaking your neck.”
“A key is good.” Gran’s eyes suddenly snapped with fire. “I’m here on a mission. Since your Mom’s on her way home, I don’t have much time,” she began, then pointed to a black purse with a long strap lying on the floor.
I grabbed her purse and handed it to her, mumbling, “How did you climb while holding onto a purse?”
Gran pushed the strap out of the way, then unzipped her purse. “I hung it on my neck, of course,” she said matter-of-factly as she retrieved a half-inch thick, paperback-sized journal in a black paisley design with silver-edged pages from her purse. She held it out to me with a big smile. “Happy birthday, Inara.”
As she put her compress back on her forehead, I took the journal from her gnarled hand and shook my head in disbelief. “You went to all this trouble to bring me a birthday present? You really shouldn’t have, Gran. I could’ve gotten it from you the next time I visited.”
“It’s not just
any
journal.” Gran nodded to the book, eyes brimming with excitement. “Open it.”
I slid off the black elastic strap holding the book closed. I expected to hear new pages crackling, but the journal opened with a whisper of well-used pages instead. I gasped at the beautiful flowing script. Pages and pages of notes, doodles; it was a diary of sorts.
“You said you wanted to know your grandmother. Did you know she wanted you to call her, ‘Nana’?”
When I shook my head, totally speechless, Gran smiled. “This was in Margaret’s belongings in storage. She asked me to pass this on to you when you turned seventeen if she wasn’t around to do it herself. And since you never really got to know your grandmother, I think this is a wonderful way for you to connect with her. My sister was always so smart, thinking way ahead.”
I smiled. “I think I would’ve liked her a lot.”
Gran touched the journal and gave me a stern look. “It’s probably best that your mother
not
read this, since it’s her mother’s personal scribblings. Margaret filled the journal with her random thoughts, life experiences, and events of importance to her. There’s stuff about your mother and you in here as well. Even though we were close, I didn’t read it—that’d feel like an invasion of privacy—but I did flip through, looking to see if she mentioned Freddie. Luckily, she did! She even wrote down his surname. I marked that page with the ribbon bookmark for you.”
A thrill jolted through me, and I gripped my grandmother’s journal to my chest, itching to delve into it. “Thank you so much for this, Gran. It means the world to me.”
She smiled, then winced as she lowered the compress from her forehead. “Does the lump look better?”
I pushed her hair out of the way. “It’s just a red spot now.” Perplexed, I asked, “After climbing inside my window like a geriatric ninja, how did you manage to fall and bump your head once you made it inside my room?”
Gran grimaced, her face crinkling as if she were trying to remember. “I don’t know. I was tired after climbing, so I thought I’d take a nap on your bed while I waited for you to get home from school. I remember bending over your desk to write you a birthday note, and then all of a sudden my knees buckled. I must’ve hit my head on the desk as I went down.”
“Please don’t ever do that again!” I said, squeezing her hand. I tried to picture Gran climbing up the side of our house. My mind boggled. She must’ve been a wild child when she was young. Her climb could’ve ended in a horrible, life-threatening fall. I rubbed my temples, trying to push away the thought. “How did you know my window would be unlocked?”
“I heard the black birds cawing on the back side of the house, so I walked around to investigate. That’s when I saw them circling above your window. I thought it rather odd, but since the window was open I climbed my way in.”
“But my window wasn’t open—”
The front door slammed, cutting off my comment.
“I’m here!” Mom said as she rushed into my room, looking disheveled with wide eyes and windblown hair.
When she went straight to Gran and hugged her tight, rambling about how worried she was, I stepped back and blinked in shock. Mom had avoided spending time with Gran ever since I could remember. She’d always kept up with how Gran was doing through me. I knew she didn’t visit her aunt because it was too painful for her to look at her without thinking of the mom she’d lost, but it had always bothered me that she avoided such a fun, special woman as Gran. Giving Gran a thumbs-up over Mom’s shoulder, I said, “Hey Mom, Gran wants to stay over tonight.”
Gran hugged Mom tight and breathed in next to her hair. “If that’s okay with you, Elizabeth. I’d love to stay for an evening.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. You’re more than welcome.” Sitting back on her knees in her charcoal-gray pencil skirt and heels, Mom grasped Gran’s hands and peered into her eyes. “Nara said you fell. Did you hit your head? We should take you to the Emergency Room and have you checked out.”