Page 21 of Pour Decisions
“Hey, hun,” she says, pulling me in for a kiss on the cheek. Nana, like the rest of both sides of our family, is tall, so she doesn’t have to pull me down too far. “What’re you cooking us?”
“Shrimp scampi.” Her house is small, so we’re just a few steps away from the kitchen. Bubba lays down smack in the middle of the limited floor space, and I shoo him to the edge. He scoots to where the linoleum meets the carpet and gives me sad eyes. Even though I know his games and know I need to limit his people food, seeing his little sad face almost makes me crack.
I’ll give him some shrimp later.
“You got dessert?” I ask.
“Yep, courtesy of Sarah Jane. Did you know she started a booth at the farmers’ market?” Nana asks.
Sarah Jane is one of my aunt Nadine’s daughters and she's about six years younger than me. She’s always been quiet, so we haven’t hung out much. I have a ton of cousins on my mom’s side, so we mostly only see each other at family reunions. I tend to hang out with her older siblings more.
“I didn’t know she baked,” I say, putting my bags on the counter.
“She’s damn good at it. I’m glad she’s getting out there after her breakup. Serves that shitbag ex of hers right. She’s going to open a whole shop someday.” Nana pauses. “Shoot, I just remembered something. Hold on.”
She grins, then pulls her huge phone from her mumu pocket and slides her glasses down her nose to text. I start gettingeverything set up so I don’t have to go digging for pans while I’m cooking. Her kitchen is tiny, but familiar, so I can get a lot done in the small space.
“You look tired,” she says once she’s done texting, easing into one of her old wicker chairs and putting her dog into her lap. “You working too hard?”
“I’m working just enough.” I pull out a pot for the pasta and fill it with water.
“Enough to look like shit?” Nana snorts. “I swear, that father of yours trained you to work yourself to the bone.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. Nana is my mom’s mother, and she doesn’t hold back her opinions on how my dad runs the business. Basically, she thinks he drives me until I’m running on fumes, and that he drives Wes crazy trying to get results. When I was in my early twenties and had to do the lower-level work, like working in the distillery or doing shifts at the bar, maybe. But now I’m in full control of myself, and I choose to work hard.
“We just have a lot going on right now.” I open the package of shrimp and dump them in a bowl under running water to thaw them. I wish the grocery store in town was big enough to have fresh, cleaned shrimp, but Jepsen is too small for that.
“You always do.”
I shrug, ignoring the feeling of Nana’s eyes laying into me from behind her glasses. “Dad is thinking of semi-retiring soon, so I have to step up. Make him feel like he can comfortably leave the company in my hands.”
“Oh lord.” She sighs and leans back in her seat. “That man isn’t going to stay retired for more than a hot minute. Delia will drive him up the damn walls before long.”
I huff a small laugh. I think half the reason my parents have stayed married as long as they have is because they don’t have to see each other all that often. Dad’s locked away in his office, of course. Mom stays busy in the community and working with thecharity arm of the company, and Dad gives her free rein to do what’s best.
And even then, Dad told Mom to go decorate my house so she’d stop redoing random rooms while he was at work. Mom has gifted Bubba more of her craft projects than I care to count, just because she can’t sit and do nothing for more than a few hours.
“He’s not retiring and sitting at home all day. He’s going to become an adviser to the company like his dad did,” I say. I salt the water before it starts to boil. “So he’d be there, but not really. He’d weigh in, but I’d have the final say in the decisions.”
“So he’ll turn stone-cold crazy like his dad?” Nana laughs, which has always sounded more like a wheeze. “That grandfather of yours has been nuts since way back.”
“Hopefully not.”
Nana’s assessment of my grandfather—my dad’s dad—is spot on. His crazy ideas actually worked to build the company into a big brand in the region, but then he went off the rails until my dad pulled him back on to prevent bankruptcy.
Then there was the whole ‘faking his death and showing up to his funeral’ thing, which is one of my earliest memories. I’m sure that’s fucked me up somehow, but I don’t like to think about it too much.
“Anyway, back to you working your tail off,” Nana says. “It’s great that you have a strong work ethic. It really is. But who are you working for?”
“What do you mean? I work for the company.”
“No, I mean do you work for yourself? For your own satisfaction?” she asks. “Or are you doing it because you want your father’s approval more?”
I take a deep breath and let it out through my nose yet again as I set aside some thawed shrimp to cook for Bubba. I keep my back to Nana so she doesn’t see my annoyance.
“His approval matters. He’s my boss,” I say. “His approval is what gets me ahead.”
Nana doesn’t speak for several beats, and I hope she doesn’t keep prodding. I’ve had enough heart-to-hearts with her to know the question that’s underneath that question. She thinks I’m working hard just to stay in Dad’s good graces. But doesn’t everyone do that, to some extent?
