Page 3 of Shadow & Stars
I sat forward, trying to take the teapot from her soft, loving hands. “Let me do that, Grandma.”
She waved me away, pouring the chamomile tea from the smallest teapot in her collection. The blue one with the daisies, the one she used only for me and my favorite tea.
“Don’t be silly, Roman,” she countered. “I like doing it.”
I shuffled in my armchair, plucking a digestive biscuit from the table between us.
She settled back in her chair after pouring herself a coffee. “Ah. This is the life.”
A glimpse of the past, a life now long gone.
I remember this day,a part of me lingering on the edges of this dream thought.
“What about this one?” Grandma asked as she picked up her dog-eared crossword book. “Seven down. Ten letters. To merge two sets of information. Ah, yes. Conflation.” She filled in the grid with her trusty gold pen.
What I wouldn’t give to have this again. Tea and crosswords and Sunday roasts and lazy days together.
Wake up!
“I was thinking about you this morning,” my grandma said, plucking two pink wafers from the biscuit tin on the table.
Why didn’t her smile reach her eyes?
“About your future,” she added. “About your heart.”
“My heart?” I touched my chest. She never brought up my childhood surgery nowadays.
In those days. This is not today.
“I know you’re lonely, sweetheart. And it worries me a lot.”
Whoa. This wasn’t a conversation for such a gorgeous autumn day. We were supposed to be gossiping while the smells of her baking wafted in from the kitchen made me drool.
Wake up, now.
But I sipped my tea, determined to stay in this place because she was here. Her smiles, this room of ornaments and trinkets that warmed the deepest parts of my soul. If I stayed here inside this memory, then grief couldn’t get me. Her death wouldn’t be real, my heart intact.
My heart…
My new heart…
I was safe here. And I wanted lots and lots of safety.
Wake. Up.
“I’m fine,” I answered. “You don’t have to worry.”
“But I do, Roman. You might think I’m speaking out of turn here, but when I look at you, I feel so sad. And I don’t know how to make it go away. That’s why I was thinking about you meeting a nice boy. Bringing him here for dinner, me sitting back to enjoy the spring in your step. I really, really want to see that spring.”
I chuckled to mask the painful truth. I wanted to date, to find myself a nice guy to spend the weekends with. Hug, kiss, enjoy sex with, be his friend, all that stuff. However, my job as TheShadow not only put the brakes on those ideas but tossed them from a speeding car window.
“Have I upset you?” she asked.
“No, Grandma.” I sipped more tea, ate another biscuit. “Thanks for worrying about me. But I’m fine. Maybe one day I can bring a guy back here for you to meet.”
“I can already see him in my head,” she said.
“You can? What does he look like?”
