Page 9 of Mating of Convenience
She shot me a dubious look. Yeah, I wouldn’t have fooled myself either. Things were looking pretty bleak and she knew it.
“Where’s Kevin?” I asked, hoping to distract her.
“Out with his friends.” She shrugged. “I don’t think he’s really noticed that we’re in trouble.”
“We’re not in trouble.”
“We are. And it’s my fault.” She glanced at the door to the room I’d just left and then took my arm to drag me down the stairs. “I don’t want Dad to hear about this, but I talked to Granny yesterday.”
“You didwhat?” My thoughts were reeling. One moment I was trying to figure out how to convince my sister that thiswasn’ther fault and the next moment she was bringing up the most despised and estranged member of this family as if we were having dinner with the lady every other Sunday.
She called herGranny.
What the fuck?
“You don’t have to look at me like that,” Kendra said, brow furrowing and arms crossed in front of her chest. She might have been my baby sister, but I knew there was no arguing with her when she got like this, and not only because she carried our mother’s alpha genes. She was a fighter, through and through. I’d known that from the moment her small hand squeezed mine as she woke up in the hospital two days after the accident that had taken our mom’s life.
“Okay,” I relented. “Just please tell me why the hell you were talking to that woman.”
Kendra looked at me as if she was wondering exactly how stupid I was. “Because she’s rich, duh.”
“Yeah, and she’s going to die alone on a pile of money. What’s your point?” Now it was on me to cross my arms in front of my chest. If Kendra thought she could pin her hopes onGranny, she was mistaken. The woman had thrown her only daughter out at the first signs of pregnancy only because she hadn’t approved of my father moving from job to job. Fourteen years later she hadn’t even attended her daughter’s funeral, never mind helping her son in law and her grandchildren out financially after the disaster. She wasn’t going to share her riches with us now.
“She’s not the way you think she is. We’ve been talking a lot.”
“A lot?” I didn’t think I’d exchanged more than ten words with the lady my entire life.
“She came up to me after school one day and invited me over to her place.”
“And you went? And you never told me?”
Kendra shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t like it. But she was actually kind of nice. And when we talked yesterday and I told her about our problems and that you’re back in town to help, she said she wanted to see you.”
“Me?” What the hell? No way was I going to go see the old hag.
“Yeah. She said she’d help out but she wants to see you first.”
What was this? Some sort of blackmail? I wasn’t impressed. If our grandmother—if she even deserved the title—really wanted to help us, she wouldn’t be tying conditions to it.
But then Kendra said, “Please, Raph, can you just try?”
If I had one weakness it was that I could never say no to my little sister.
People wondered when I told them I didn’t want kids. They didn’t know I’d already raised a pretty great one. Two, really. Kevin could be a brat sometimes, but I loved him too. If there was even the tiniest chance that talking to my grandmother—or grandmonster as I liked to refer to her in my head—could help my family, what choice did I really have?
6
Raphael
My grandma’s house was a little outside of town, at the outskirts of the forest that covered the hills bordering Oceanport. I hadn’t been here in a long, long time, but the house wasn’t hard to find--red brick glowering against the dark green of the trees, a monstrosity that loomed over its surroundings. My grandma had always lived in luxury, even as my dad struggled to feed us after Mom passed away.
She hadn’t cared.
So why was I here again?
Because Kendra asked me to, right.
Suppressing a sigh, I killed the engine of the car and got out. I’d just get this over with and then I’d go have dinner with my family. Myactualfamily.
