Page 48 of Below the Far Horizon
Grace said a small prayer that Stacy and Jill would be kind, even if they didn’t agree. She didn’t want to see the excitement and happiness torn from her mother’s face.
There was a perfunctory knock at the door, and then it opened. Jill and Stacy walked in together.
“Did you guys drive together?” Grace asked as she walked over to greet her sisters.
“No, we just have the same timing apparently,” Stacy said, using her free arm to hug her sister. Grace was surprised, but she hugged her back. “I brought some Danishes, because I couldn’t show up with nothing.” She held up the box in her other hand.
“I bet if you take those to the kitchen, Mom can find fancy plates to put them on.” Grace spoke as she leaned toward Jill and embraced her as well.
“That’s where we differ, because I didn’t bring anything. I just got off a twelve-hour shift at five o’clock. I grabbed a couple of hours of sleep before I got up to come here.”
“Doesn’t sound like enough sleep,” Grace said, looking at her sister with concern. She hadn’t considered that as a nurse, she probably didn’t work regular hours the way everyone else did.
“I’ll be okay. I just can’t stay very long, because I need to go back and sleep some more. I’m going in again at five o’clock this evening.”
“That’s a rough schedule,” Grace said, walking toward the tablebeside her sister. She really did want to have a better relationship with her sisters. She’d reached out to her friends, but either the phone numbers she had were old and not any good, or they didn’t answer. Since she hadn’t spoken to either Claire or Lauren.
But her sisters were right in front of her, and she intended to do her best to start building something that would last. The reason they didn’t have a relationship was her fault. Her and her arrogance, running out of town thinking she was better than everyone else.
“But it’s very rewarding work. Although, it’s stressful.”
“That’s not good for your health,” Grace said, thinking of the irony of someone working as a nurse and the work itself making them less healthy, more likely to need a nurse.
“I know. I love the work right now, but I do have an eye out for a nice, cushy office job with a good doctor. Something like that would be less stressful than working in a hospital. I can handle it now, but I can see that as I get older, I’m going to want something else.”
“It’s good that you’re able to see that,” Grace said, wishing that she was somehow capable of seeing what was good for her and what she needed. Unfortunately, she consistently made bad choices. And really had no idea of what she actually wanted or what was best for her.
She could see all of those mistakes scattered throughout her life. She wanted to ask her sister how she got so wise and how she figured things out. But her mother came over, embracing her sister.
“What’s this big news you have?” Stacy asked, coming out from the kitchen where she’d gone to set her Danishes down.
“You’ll find out in just a few minutes. I wanted to come out and greet Jill and chat a bit before…well, before,” her mom said, her eyes shining.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Stacy asked Grace point-blank.
Grace fidgeted. She knew exactly what this was about. But she could feel Stacy’s displeasure, and she didn’t want to get yelled at.
“Don’t you worry about it. Everything’s going to come out in just a few minutes. Now, come to the kitchen with me while I find a plate to arrange your Danishes on and tell me what’s going on in your life. Because pretty soon, it’s going to be all about me.”
Her mother put one arm around Stacy and one arm around Jill and guided them into the kitchen. Grace trailed along behind, not feeling left out. After all, she would have her mother to herself all week, and her sisters had to go back to their actual lives.
Maybe there was an advantage to being at rock bottom and having nowhere else to go. She didn’t have anything to take her away from her mother, as she did when she was younger. It felt like a reward to get to be with her.
Stacy and Jill chatted about their lives as their mom found a plate and arranged the Danishes artistically on it. Her mom had a flair for that, and Grace had inherited it. Jill and Stacy would probably just serve them from the box.
Not that there was anything wrong with that, because there wasn’t. It was just something that Grace had that made her feel like she was a little gifted. And made her feel a little less jealous of her sisters’ successes in life. Sure, she screwed up. She made some bad decisions and had things go in a totally wrong direction. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t change things and turn them around.
And that included talking to Trevor and seeing if she could work things out. No. Admitting that she had feelings for him. Strong feelings, and that she wanted to have a real relationship, not a fake one. And not just friends.
She smiled a bit as she thought about their kiss under the kayak. It wasn’t exactly romantic, with the wet and the wind and the crunched-up way they were sitting, but in her mind, it was absolutely perfect. It couldn’t have been better. Unless he would have wrapped his arms around her and kissed her like he meant it. Instead of just allowing her to kiss him.
“You must be thinking of something really nice with that sappy smile on your face,” Stacy observed, and Grace realized that she was smiling for no reason, since she was not paying the slightest bit of attention to what everyone was saying.
She didn’t have to answer though, because there was a knock at the door. This one was not perfunctory, and all the ladies in the room turned to look at it.
“I’ll go answer it,” her mom said before anyone else could say anything.
“What is going on?” Stacy asked, drilling her eyes into Grace’s. Growing up, Stacy was a bit of a taskmaster, a control freak, the boss, the way the oldest child typically was. Grace had been trained to listen to her, and the look that she gave her now was intimidating, reaching back into her childhood.
