Page 62 of Peaches

“I know it was supposed to add value to my life,” I continue. “Virtue. A superiority, what have you,” I say with a wave of my hand and a roll of my eyes. My grandmother starts to arrange the peach slices in the pie tin, and I watch mesmerized for a moment, trying to find the nerve to continue with what I am asking.

“But do you think…” I pause, confused with myself because I know I need to attempt to break the contract, but doing so would break this arrangement, and I’m suddenly feeling more upset over that than the lie I’m living. Sorry, Grace. For reasons neither you nor I understand, I just can’t. Not yet. Grace doesn’t know about the damn contract any ways, another issue I know I need to rectify.

“Never mind,” I find myself muttering, temporarily forced to silence as I war with myself and try and figure out just how big of a mess I got myself into. One, I have to admit I’m not entirely sure I want out of, and that sudden epiphany startles me even more.

Marie’s eyes raise as she picks up a dish with some melted butter and her own special secret seasoning blend. She starts to brush the mixture over the peaches, and I find myself frowning as I watch. She knows what I’m attempting to get at, she has to. But instead of even giving the smallest inclination that she knows why I came to talk to her, she continues making her damn pie and it slowly starts to drive me crazy. My gaze wanders to the left and out the kitchen window as I take in a late afternoon thunderstorm starting to brew as the winds pick up and the sky darkens.

“Did I ever tell you how I met your grandfather?”

My eyes flash back to hers because there is nothing I like more than when she tells me stories about the man I looked up to my whole life. The one who I never really got the chance to know too well before he was gone, either. Her eyes lift and hold mine, and my silence is all the answer she needs as she smiles and takes us both on a trip down memory lane.

“He was working as a journalist back then,” she says, exposing something I never knew about him. “He was always a writer, even before the publishing house, all the awards, all this,” she continues, elaborating by picking up her hands and gesturing to the space around us. The gold bangles on her aged wrists rattle and I smile fondly at her and wait for her to go on. “Before he even had more than two cents he could rub together.”

She puts the top on the pie, and I notice how she pinches the sides down perfectly around the rim like she could do so in her sleep. And I bet she could!

“He got called to an assignment, a robbery. What he didn’t know was that job was about to change the rest of his life.”

She looks up at me almost knowingly and I glare back with a smirk on my face. This woman may think she can read me like a damn book, maybe a lot like she read my Pops back in the day, but there is a whole lot more to Grace and I’s story than she knows, so I doubt she’s got me pegged yet. But still, I’m interested to hear what she has to say and so I remain silent and wait.

“The robbers had taken everything from me.”

From her? Oh really? I sit up a little straighter as this story is suddenly becoming a lot more interesting.

“I was nineteen. Alone. No family. Living in the worst part of town. I worked in a little corner shop waiting tables two blocks away just to barely make ends meet.”

My eyes squint as my thoughts stumble slightly over her words. I always thought Pops and Grams came from money. I knew my grandfather had made a name for himself by the hard workhe himselfput in, but I never would have guessed they started off so - lacking, forlackof a better word.

I’m surprised for a few reasons. One because the way Grams holds herself like she’s always belonged to the elite crowd makes me want to beg to differ, and two, the way Pops always commanded a room when he entered. I figured that was something inherited, not learned. I knew growing up there was more to their story, but I never would have guessed this.

“To make matters worse, I was assaulted during the robbery.”

Now my stomach really turns as my brow furrows and my eyes knit together in anger.

“But your grandfather,” she says as she picks up a knife and slices four lines in the top of the pie to vent it while it bakes.

“He came on the scene, took one look at me, and said…”

I wait, goosebumps prickling my flesh, my mind completely blank as I sit suddenly needing her words to fill it. But she picks up the pie, turns, puts it in the oven, and makes me hang on her last word for the damn punch line like my life depends on it.

Turning slowly, or quickly for a ninety-year-old woman, you decide, she makes her way back over to the counter and looks in my eyes with extreme purpose as I wait, intently, to listen to what she has to say.

Finally, she states, “I’ll make you a deal.”

My head cocks to the side and I’m all ears as she smiles back remembering their exchange.

“Leave this place, come live with me, and you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

My eyes widen because there is no way in hell Grams is telling the truth.

“Granted, this was 1945. I know times have changed, but the feelings haven’t so much. And I think you know what feelings I’m talking about, Brettly.”

She gives me another all-knowing smile and I roll my eyes like a damn two-year-old.

“When you know, you know,” she grins. “I took one look at your grandfather, a man I had never met before, and knew my chances were better walking away with him then facing another day without him or his slightly deranged offer. I knew the second he walked into the room my life had changed. How something like that can happen and you don’t sense it moments before your life is forever rearranged, I’ll never know. But one way or another, I was either walking out of there with your grandfather or going to spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had said yes.”

“That’s how much I knew what I was doing, Ihadto do. Regardless of if it was right or not. And the way he looked at me. The way he walked right up to me as if I was the only person that existed in the whole room, which mind you was buzzing with cops, detectives, and other newspaper writers, it took my breath away. He only had eyes for one thing, and that was my future. Knowing so made it easy to put my trust in him, even if it was small at first, and make a decision that changed both of our lives forever.”

I have no fucking words after that speech!

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