Summer Snow (9 page)

Grandma reached out to touch my leg and let her fingers rest above my knee. I liked it that she had bridged the space between us. “Why do you think Janice came?” she asked gently.

I had asked myself that question dozens, maybe hundreds, of times since Janice and Simon had swept out of our driveway, but I had not yet come up with an answer. Curiosity? Instinct? Sheer stupidity? She had nowhere else to go? Grandma had not seen her ex-daughter-in-law mouth an apology to me across the table, and I didn't mention it. I couldn't believe that Janice had come to make amends. I said nothing.

Grandma changed her tactic. “Where are they now?”

I had wondered myself. “Simon said they weren't going back to Illinois.”

“Janice said they were staying around here for a while,” Grandma confirmed.

“Why?” I blurted out, shutting off the car with an angry flick of my wrist.

“I don't know. But is this the way you want it to end? What if they leave and it's another ten years before you see them? What if you never see them again? You've already lost one parent.”

My eyebrows arched in disbelief. “I've already lost
two
parents.” I stuck two fingers in the air for emphasis, and though I wasn't angry at Grandma, she looked taken aback. But I couldn't stop. “Janice walked out of my life years ago, and her sudden appearance on our doorstep doesn't automatically make her my mother again. She's the name on my birth certificate, nothing more.”

Grandma opened her mouth and then just as quickly closed it. She looked away from me and considered for a moment before she quietly said, “But, Julia, honey, Simon is your
brother
.”

It was a loaded word and she knew it. From the time I was old enough to realize that my friends were the proud big brothers and sisters of chubby, babbling siblings, I had wanted one of my own. I had pestered Dad and Janice endlessly, begging for a little addition to our family that I could mother and boss and ignore. And when I was older and began to feel the solitariness of a home where mine was the only young voice, I redoubled my efforts, offering to care for the child as if this imaginary little person were a puppy that I could periodically feed and water and keep out of my parents' hair. When Janice left and all hope was lost, I took a babysitting class and pretended the neighbors' kids were not just the pests who lived down the road. Even now, Jacob and Simon, Emily and Maggie were more than friends to me. I couldn't help smiling wryly when I thought of Simon Walker, the blond-haired, football-loving early teen I had known and loved for years, and the Simon I had just met. One I considered my brother. The other actually was.

Brother
. The word hung in the silence of the car and made the hum of the wind against the doors somehow malevolent. “I don't know what to do,” I whispered and was horrified to feel a tear spill down my cheek and drip off my chin. “Stupid hormones!” I sniffed, frustrated. “I'm not a crier—you know I'm not. It's these hormones. My hair is practically too thick to fit into a ponytail, I'm hungry all the time, I get headaches from smells I didn't even notice before, and I cry at the drop of a hat!” Irritably, hastily, I wiped the salty streak with the palm of my hand. The wetness felt cool in the steadily dropping temperature of the still car.

“I know,” Grandma consoled. She patted my leg.

“What do we do now?” I asked hesitantly, wanting to move forward but afraid to hear the answer.

“I don't know,” Grandma admitted again, and it was more than a little unsettling to realize that she had very few answers and more likely just as many questions as I did. “But we could start by finding them. Janice said they were ‘sticking around.' They couldn't have gone too far.”

“Okay” was all I said.

We waited for a long time in the doctor's office—a preteen boy with what seemed like an extra joint in his forearm and a mechanic with black, greasy hands that were smeared in drying blood took precedence over a little old lady with her foot snugly held in a black orthopedic boot.

Though I felt conspicuous in the doctor's office, I was grateful that I had dressed in my work clothes first thing in the morning as it was uncertain whether or not we would make it home before my shift. But when Dr. Morales saw me with my Value Foods uniform on, he reminded me for the tenth time at least that being on my legs for such long stretches throughout my pregnancy would surely result in varicose veins. I groaned inwardly and glanced at the door to make sure it was firmly shut. I knew I wouldn't be able to hide my condition much longer, but it drove me crazy to hear my doctor mention it so casually, so dispassionately. Only a handful of people knew about my pregnancy, and I wanted to be the one to decide when the rest of the world could learn of my secret. Besides, what did I care about varicose veins? I didn't even know what they were.

Grandma's fracture seemed to be healing okay, and Dr. Morales gave her permission to drive—something she hadn't done in a few weeks. I had wondered at his instructions the first time we visited his office as the affected ankle was her left one and her car was an automatic. She didn't need her left foot to drive anyway. But Dr. Morales had been Grandma's physician for over twenty years, and she never questioned his advice or directives even if they were hard to follow. Not driving had been very difficult for her, and the moment we stepped out of the office, she held her hand out for the keys, smiling at me a little impishly.

I felt like a bit of an idiot when she drove right up to the door of Value Foods and enthusiastically waved me out. Just as we pulled up, Michael, who was even more good-looking than Alicia had implied, stepped out of the double doors pushing a cartload of shopping bags for an elderly gentleman and his grumpy-faced wife. When he saw me being dropped off for work by my grandmother, he grinned widely and winked. I raised my eyebrows helplessly and hoped that I looked nonchalant.

My shift at Value Foods started at eleven, just in time for the noon rush. In preparation for the weekend ahead, it seemed the whole town decided to get groceries at the same time every Friday—during their lunch hour. The carts were usually gone, the aisles were packed, and everyone was testy because of the inconvenience of waiting, but it was always the same. And Clark always scheduled our shifts to overlap for a three-hour slot during the middle of every madcap weekend rush.

“Five o'clock,” I reminded Grandma gravely. I had worked a hectic Friday shift often enough to know that I would be worthless after six hours on my feet, and I had no intention of staying a second longer than I had to.

“Five o'clock,” she repeated, nodding seriously. “I won't be a second late; I promise.”

It was a little strange to watch her go, knowing that as I bagged groceries, performed price checks, and helped people recover unusual items from their forgettable dwellings on the very top shelves, Grandma would be playing the part of a detective. “I'll call the local hotels,” she'd informed me before I slipped out of the car. “We'll see if anything comes up.” I nodded, a little scared that she would find them and equally afraid that she wouldn't.

But I didn't have time to ponder what my grandmother was doing. True to experience, from eleven until two, I barely had time to blink. Denise was the shift manager—and in a pretty sour mood, even for her—and she ordered me around with more than a little irritation in her voice. We had worked together a few times before, and I had found her to be sullen and resentful. I could have been reading her wrong, but she seemed exasperated that she was still stuck in Mason when she so obviously deserved much better than this little coffee smudge on a map. She was older than me by a few years, and though I had briefly entertained modest daydreams that we would become good friends, it was clear there would be no such relationship between us. Graham had been extremely generous to her when he had told me on my very first day that she could be “a bear.”

I tried to give her a genuine smile when I walked past on my way to the back room, and I very dutifully threw myself into my work. Unfortunately, while most employees were assigned a particular task—bagging groceries and helping people to their cars, manning the floor and restocking, running the till—by accident or by design I ended up being the only floater, the only person who played every part and filled in any resulting gaps. Because it was so busy, I quite literally ran, and when Denise caught me breathing a little too hard, she made some snide comment about how I needed to get in better shape.

I seethed. And I couldn't help regretting that I hadn't worked harder at making her my ally the first day I met her. It had only taken me a few hours of working with her to realize that those she liked were treated as royalty and those she disliked were treated as scum. Though it had never occurred to me that we had a bad relationship, apparently we were not close enough to warrant even common courtesy on crummy days. It was a bit of an act, but when I wanted to snap at her, I smiled and tried to be sweet. I decided life at Value Foods would be much more enjoyable if I could ingratiate myself to her at least a little.

The store died at two o'clock. The employees who had been working since eight politely checked with Denise before heading to the back room. It sounded almost as if they were small children asking to be excused from the dinner table, and she made a big parental display of glancing around the store and trying to determine if she would be able to let them leave or not. In reality, she had no right to make them stay, but in practice, she had done it many times before. Today there was no visible reason to keep them around, and she grudgingly said, “You may go,” although it sounded like she thought they had asked for the moon.

Catching me in the corner of her eye, Denise turned to see me leaning against a closed counter. I had just finished cleaning up a shattered baby food jar in aisle four and I was only awaiting further instructions. But she thought I was slacking off. “Taking your break already?” she asked. Looking at her watch, she warned me, “You only have ten minutes left.”

I had heard Alicia say the same thing before, but when she said it, I wasn't possessed by a desire to strangle her scrawny little neck.

I bit off a smart retort and turned on my heel to find a folding chair to fall into in the break room. Rolling my eyes as I walked away, I caught up with Michael and gave his shoulder a little bump. He was stripping off his apron with a flourish and unclamping his faded tie. Black-haired, blue-eyed Michael was one of the few people Denise actually seemed to like, and I had watched her try out a seductive grin on him when he touched base with her before leaving.

But I wasn't so sure that he liked her. “The yeti came to work today,” he commented under his breath, referring to a week or so ago when Denise had come into the store as a customer, dressed head to toe in white. Even her sunglasses were white rimmed, and while she was probably trying to appear ultra haute and fashionable, she just looked ridiculous. Some of the employees started joking that she was secretly the abominable snowman, and her job at Value Foods was nothing more than a clever disguise to throw people off her trail. She certainly was cold enough.

I gave him a devious look and tried to suppress a yawn.

“She worked you like a pack mule,” Michael commented decently. “Too bad you have a few hours left.”

“Take the rest of my shift,” I suggested impulsively, knowing that there was no chance he would ever do so.

“Are you crazy? No way. Uh-uh.”

“Come on,” I begged halfheartedly. “I'm beat.…”

We chatted inconsequentially all the way to the back of the store, and I found myself enjoying his company against my better judgment. I didn't know much about him, other than he had to be out of high school since we sometimes worked days together. I guessed Michael was around my age, but he had a Faith Academy sticker in the back window of his car—evidence that he'd attended the private Christian school while I went to Mason Public. Rumor had it he was going to the local tech school for a year to save up money so he could go to the University of Iowa. I couldn't remember his alleged chosen field or anything else about him.
I don't want to know anything more about him
, I reminded myself quickly. Besides, even if I did want to know more, he would want nothing to do with me in a matter of weeks. Trying to strike up a friendship with him was an exercise in futility. What guy would want to be associated—in any capacity—with a pregnant girl?

The back room was bustling with activity as people piled on coats and hats and punched time cards in the ancient metal clock on the wall. I grabbed the nearest chair and sank into it gratefully, closing my eyes for a moment as a handful of different conversations washed over me.

I heard, “What are you doing tonight?” a number of times, and when someone tacked
Julia
on the end, I promptly opened my eyes and tried to look interested.

Graham was sitting on the table in front of me, munching on a Butterfinger that left orange slivers on his white collared shirt. “So?” he asked pleasantly.

“Nothing much,” I muttered. “How about you?”

“I feel like going to a movie, but nothing good is playing. There's nothing worse than a bad movie.”

“Oh, I can think of a few worse things,” I said but was thankful when he took my comment lightly.

Two girls whose names I didn't know had paused by the table, and Graham looked up to catch the tail end of their exchange. “What's the gossip today, girls?” he asked casually.

One of them flashed a sisterly smile at him. “Wouldn't you like to know,” she teased. “Graham's got to be up-to-date on all the scandals so he can set us straight.”

“Most of that stuff is usually hogwash,” he stated.

I giggled out loud because it was something my grandfather would have said—a word I hadn't heard used in years. It was hard not to admire Graham for being his own person and pulling it off so well.