Page 12 of Breaking Emily's Rules
Emily
“Wake up, Emily.”
I opened one eye.
Grammy stood over me, dressed in her sparkly blue jeans and leopard print top. It was one of the most irritating things about my grandmother. She refused to give in to convention and wear tracksuits like all her friends did.
I hadn’t even heard her come in.
“What good is it to give me the loft for privacy if you keep barging in on me like this? What if I had company?”
“Emily, dear, please. I don’t have time for jokes. We have the Chamber of Commerce party today. I’ll need you to help George. He’s an old man now.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that.”
George Carver had worked for the family for as long as I could remember. Old or not, he was still our handyman, our gardener and a long-time family friend.
My dog, Pookie, a Poodle and Chihuahua mix, peeked out from the under the covers.
“You’re letting Pookie in your bed? What’s wrong with you?”
“She’s old, Grammy, and it was cold out last night. I caught her shivering.” That was my story and I was sticking to it. Growing up on our pseudo ranch usually meant dogs lived outside, but I liked it better this way. If Grammy was going to let me have the loft over the garage, then I could let Pookie have a spot on my bed at night.
“Girl, your heart is just too big. Pookie has you fooled. She’s fine outside and has a warm dry place in the pen. Cuddles up next to Beast every chance she gets. Anyway, the meat is coming in at noon, and I’ll need you to check it. You know what happened last time.” Grammy started to make the bed with me in it.
“Hey. Why don’t you let me get out of bed first? What time is it?” Fighting to push off the last dregs of sleep, I pulled the covers up to my nose. I wasn’t sure, but I might have been in the middle of a dream that made me blush, even thinking of it. It might have involved Stone and some of that horizontal dancing.
“It’s time for you to get up. And there’s something I want to show you first.” Grammy walked toward the front door and put her hand on the doorknob.
“What is it?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock.Eight thirty.Too bad Grammy didn’t believe in sleeping in even on the weekends, because right now all I wanted was another few minutes. And I wasn’t going to get them.
“Wait till you see. I ordered it and it came yesterday. I’ll meet you at the house for breakfast.” Grammy let herself out, but not before picking up Pookie and carrying her out. “Dogs stay outside.”
I rustled my feet from under the warm covers and let them touch the cool hardwood. I shrank back and resisted the urge to bury under the blanket and go back to my dreams. Dreams in which I’d gone home with Stone.
Forget about him. I’m not ready for someone like that, and maybe I never will be.No, I was never going to be “that girl.” The girl who didn’t worry about consequences. The one who took a chance. I was too sensible for all that.
I showered, tried not to think of Stone, dried off and dressed in the working jeans and Fortune Ranch company shirt I wore while working on the family’s ranch. Not that it was a ranch anymore, unless one counted a petting zoo and three ponies. But Grammy insisted on keeping the name, a testament to the former glory of the Parker family’s four hundred–acre cattle ranch of days gone by.
After eminent domain and the freeway extension had made its way through, we’d been left with forty acres and the house. Thank God for ever-resourceful Grammy, who claimed she hadn’t lived through the depression for nothing. And even if the family business now came down to outdoor company parties, picnics and high school Sadie Hawkins dances, we still had our home.
Thank heavens for that, because right now I needed home. The place where I’d grown up and the last place I’d lived with Mama. She’d been gone seventeen years, but her absence still ached if I thought about it too much.
I made my way down the creaky steps of my second-story apartment loft above the detached garage and jogged over to the main Victorian house on the hill. I threw open the side door to the kitchen and walked in to the sounds of Molly’s high-pitched voice. “That’s it—you’ve finally taken the last train into Crazy Town, and this time I’m not sure you’ll be back.”
“What’s up?” I grabbed a mug from the cupboard.
Molly and Grammy stood before some type of large vase on the kitchen counter.
“Grammy has done it now.” Molly looked like she’d woken only minutes ago and stood in the middle of the kitchen wearing her oversized Hairdressers Do It with Style T-shirt, hair mussed and eyes bloodshot with the after effects of too much tequila.
“Once again, your sister is demonstrating how short-sighted she can be. This is where I’ll be buried—my ashes will be, anyway. And I want you girls to pick the perfect place where I’ll be seated for all eternity. I was thinking somewhere in the dining room.”
That thing sitting on the kitchen counter was an urn? No wonder Molly was freaked out. I wasn’t sure I could ever eat food in here again. “Can we take it off the kitchen counter?”
“For the love of Pete, you girls act like I bought a used urn. This was ordered from the most highly regarded crematorium in the state. Don’t you think it’s nice?” Grammy ran her hand along the little pink roses that decorated the border.
I couldn’t look at the place where my Grammy’s bones would someday lie. “Can’t we do this another time?”
