Page 61 of Tumbleweed Temptation
“I disagree. I don't want to discuss it now. I want you to leave.”
“Darla. The lunch crowd?”
Janine made a rude sound. “We can handle it.”
Tears burned Ginny’s eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried. She wasn't going to do it here in the middle of the diner.
She took another step back, reached blindly behind her to untie her apron as she turned and walked out, tossing the apron on the counter on her way.
*****
GINNY WALKED UP THEsteps of the small house her grandfather had bought after she came to live with him. She remembered, even as young as she was, being horrified by the trailer he’d lived in when the social worker had delivered her to the trailer park. She remembered likewise being terrified of the skinny man with the straggly hair who’d opened the door to stare at her, remembered the stretched-out Metallica shirt he’d been wearing, the faded jeans falling off his skinny hips, remembered the curl of smoke from his cigarette making her sneeze.
This man, her only living relative. Well. The only one the state thought acceptable.
He’d worked hard to buy this house for her, and as scary as he’d looked to her seven-year-old eyes, he was the sweetest man she’d ever known.
Now Patrick sat forward on the couch, stabbing out a cigarette with one hand and clicking the channel with the remote in his other. Ginny didn't see what he’d been watching, but long suspected he’d been smoking in the house when she wasn't home. He burned an awful lot of candles for a nearly seventy-year-old man.
“What are you doing home so early?”
Again she wondered what he’d been watching as she set her little purse on the half-wall between the living and dining room.
“I told Janine I want to work for Austin. I’d planned to give her my two weeks notice but she sent me home.”
He waved away the smoke that still curled up from the saucer he’d been using as an ash tray and stood up. “You decided to do that?”
“I did. I just.” She lifted her hand to her head. “I need something different. I never wanted to wait tables this long, and I did it for her, not so she would leave me the business. But now I’ve hurt her, and she doesn't want me to finish my shift, let alone my two weeks.”
“Janine is a proud woman. She doesn’t want to think she might have been wrong. You know that about her.”
“I do.” She crossed the room and dropped to the couch at the end away from the ash tray. “And I know I hurt her, which is why I put it off so long.”
“She wanted you to take over the diner so she could retire.”
“I knew that, even though she never really told me that in so many words. But that was never something I wanted to do. I never really thought I had a choice, and then when one was presented to me, I couldn't think about anything else. Does that make sense?”
“I don't guess I ever had any choices presented to me like that.”
“Of course you did. I was a choice. Buying this house was a choice. You made good choices.”
“I’m glad you think so. Do you think you made a good choice here?”
She lifted her hand to her temple and twisted her head to look at him. “I didn't make it lightly. But I admit, I thought Janine would listen to my reasons instead of reacting so emotionally.”
Patrick shook his head. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her get so attached to you. I knew what she was doing, and I thought it was helping her, but I think I let it go too long. I should have stopped it.”
Ginny put her hand on her grandpa’s skinny tattooed wrist. “I knew what she was doing, too, and we helped her get through her grief. We thought we were helping her, anyway. It’s been twelve years. I thought she would move beyond it.”
“She loves you, Ginny. She’s upset and hurt now, but she’s going to get past it. I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“I’ve always known I was selfish, but I never wanted to hurt anyone because of it.”
“Sweetheart, it’s not being selfish to want something more for yourself. I almost wish you’d done it when you were younger, wish you’d gone to college like you wanted. I know you didn't because of Janine, and she wasn't in a good place then, but I wish you had gone with your friends and did what other girls your age did.”
Tears burned her eyes at what had been lost because of that stupid rainstorm. “I didn't because Bridget couldn’t.”
“And I should have pushed you harder. I was proud of your heart then, of your compassion. But I should have made you go to college then.”
