Page 90 of Trustfall

She laughs and goes to stand, but I put my hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

“Don’t get up, Gram. I’ll come to you.”

“I’m not an invalid,” she complains.

“I know, but this is how it used to be. You’d be sitting in your chair at home, and I’d come home and fling myself onto you.”

I kneel down, just like Nate did earlier, and wrap my arms around her, taking in her fresh, clean scent.

And then a dam breaks, and I can’t control it. The tears start pouring out, staining her gray and maroon striped shirt. It makes me think of Nate’s Spiderman shirt and how Gram’s tears dotted it that day we lost him in the city.

“What’s wrong, baby girl?” she coos, patting my back.

“I—I think I’m in love,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve admitted it to myself, let alone anyone else.

“That’s a good thing, sweetheart. Why the tears?”

“I’m scared.”

“It wouldn’t be love if it weren’t scary,” she says, twirling a lock of my hair in her fingers.

“But why is it so hard? I just—it seemed so easy with you and Opa.”

Gram barks out a laugh. “Love is never easy, child.”

“But you never fought. You never yelled. He tap-danced for you.”

Gram’s brows furrow in confusion for a fleeting moment. Then, a memory lights up her eyes, and another fit of laughter escapes her lips.

“The day we lost Nate. I remember. I was ready to wring his damn neck. He was supposed to be watching you two. I don’t know what I would have done if I lost—” Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t cry. “He did that to remind me we had company. That you and Nate were standing there watching. We never wanted to fight in front of you two.” She runs the back of her hand along my face, wiping my tears. Her hands are warm and soft. I close my eyes, reveling in her touch. Who knows how many more days I will get her like this? Days when she knows who I am and can remember something that happened years ago.

“We fought, Emory. Like every couple fights. We had tough days. Days when we didn’t talk to each other. Days when it felt like love wouldn’t be enough. But we never wanted you and Nate to see that. You both had been through so much already, losing your mother at such a young age.”

I pull back from her, searching her eyes—hazel like mine.

“This whole time I thought Opa was distracting you from the pain, making you forget.”

“He did,” she says. “For a moment. Just enough to remind me that we still had a job to do. But even the best distraction doesn’t make the pain go away. I lost my daughter, and for several terrifying minutes, I thought I had lost my grandson, too. He couldn’t erase that pain, but he could postpone it, I guess.”

She lifts her hand from my face. “We weren’t perfect, Emory. But when we hit a snag, we pushed through it. We fought for our love, just like your mama.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you’ve never met your grandparents on your father’s side,” she says, placing her hand over mine. “He came from a wealthy family, and they didn’t approve of him falling in love with a nurse. She was never going to be good enough for them. But she was head over heels for him. I remember the day she came home and told me about the dark-haired man she helped that day at work. He got into a fight with his brother and ended up in the Emergency Room. She cleaned the cut on his face, and they chatted until she was called away to help someone else. But before she left, he managed to get her phone number. She was thrilled when he called her later.”

My jaw could not be further on the floor. I have never heard any of this. I knew my mom was a nurse, of course. It’s part of the reason why I wanted to become one. Gram always told me stories of how my mom was a healer ever since she was a little girl. I wanted to heal people too. But I didn’t know that’s how she met my dad.

“Brian was good to her. It was clear he loved her too. We had our concerns, of course. We knew he came from wealth and that his family expected him to marry within his class, but when they sat us down one day and told us they were expecting a baby boy, we could not have been happier.”

“Nate? They had him before…so, that’s why they got married?”

“No,” she replies. “They had him because they were in love, they got married because they were in love, and they had you because they were in love. They fought against all the obstacles trying to bring them down. Your father’s family cut him off financially, so he started his own business. It was hard, starting from scratch, but he always made time for you kids and your mother. Until she died…and then he stopped fighting. He didn’t know how to fight without her.”

“So you took us in, and he married his job.”

“Yes,” she says with an apologetic look in her eyes.

“So love brings you down no matter what. If you break up, it kills you. If you stay together, it kills you. There’s no winning.”

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