Page 38 of Leave It to Us
Tonight, it seemed to be taking longer. So long that amid all the thoughts from today and tonight circling through her mind, she remembered that Gabriel had texted her while they’d been at Ms.Janie’s place. She rolled over and reached out to the nightstand to grab her phone. The screen lighting up like a beacon in the dark room alerted her to the time—1:53. Too late to call him, even though she knew there was a strong likelihood that he’d be awake.
Gabriel was a night owl. He hated early-morning wake-up calls or good-morning texts, but he wouldn’t be overly upset by a late-night one. Still, after reading his message again, she realized she didn’t have to call him—she could just respond by text, and then he wouldn’t have more slick words to say about her ignoring his messages when they talked again.
GABRIEL:How’s it going? You being good?
HER:It’s going and you know I’m always good.
It wasn’t until after she’d already hit “Send” that she grinned, because she could just hear him challenging heralways goodcomment. How many times had he told her she brought out the bad in him? Andhow many times had she countered that with the fact that she couldn’t exacerbate what wasn’t already there? That thought had her smiling even harder. She missed him already, and that was weird because, one, she hadn’t been gone that long, and two, they weren’t the type of friends who missed each other. Well, up until this moment, they hadn’t actually had to be, since she hadn’t had any extra money to travel anywhere, and Gabriel just wasn’t a big fan of traveling. At least, that’s what she thought since he never went anywhere.
The buzzing of her phone gave her a little jolt as she read his response.
GABRIEL:Now you know that’s a lie. And it’s too late for you to be up texting. Go to sleep.
HER:Not fair, you’re awake.
GABRIEL:I’m off tomorrow so I can sleep as late as I want. You’re in a house that’s about to undergo renovations. Work crews will probably be there at the crack of dawn.
Not tomorrow, but she hadn’t had a chance to tell him the details of what they’d decided to do and the tentative timeline.
HER:I do have to be up early.
GABRIEL:So go to sleep.
That was what she’d told Jeremiah she was coming in the house to do. But then sleep hadn’t found her, and she’d started texting Gabriel. She didn’t feel any sleepier now than she had when she’d reached for her phone. She refused to believe that this had anything to do with Gabriel. And to prove that point to herself, she replied:
HER:I am. Good night.
GABRIEL:good night
Tami put the phone back on the table and plopped down in the bed. She pulled the blankets up to her neck and tried like hell to get to sleep, but that still didn’t work. Eventually, she climbed out of bed and walked a familiar path out of her room and down the hallway to the primary suite, Grandma Betty’s room.
It was a familiar trek down the long hallway until she stopped in front of the closed door. She didn’t recall who’d closed the door after their walk-through earlier in the day, but now she simply stared down at the knob like it was a foreign object. The mixture of hesitation and anticipation that swept through her was weird and probably unnecessary. She’d been in this room hundreds of times before—hours earlier, to be exact. But at this moment, for some reason, standing here felt different.
It felt like an intrusion.
With a shake of her head, she told herself that didn’t make any sense. Grandma Betty was gone, and in the next couple of days, complete strangers would be in this house and in this room. So what if she—who was definitely not a stranger—walked in here tonight? And did what? Why had she come down the hall to this room tonight?
When she was younger, especially in those years immediately following Daddy’s death, she’d always walked this path; given a brief, quiet knock; and waited for Grandma Betty’s “Come in” before she entered. It never took long for her grandmother to respond, no matter what time it was, like maybe she’d been waiting for Tami to appear. She lifted her hand then, letting her knuckles glide over the ridges of the wood door as if she were going to knock. But she didn’t. There was no one on the other side to answer this time. The thought had her lowering her head and closing her eyes to the tears that instantly welled.
Then, as if her mind knew exactly what her heart needed, a song popped into her mind, and she began to hum. It was one of Grandma Betty’s songs, an up-tempo one that had been in the top ten on the Billboard list for seventeen weeks in 1979. Maybe it was odd that she’dremember that song while standing at this door in the middle of the night, but maybe it wasn’t.
She let her hand ease down until her fingers closed around the knob, and she turned it, then pushed the door open. Her feet moved across the carpeted floor as fast as they used to when she was younger, until she stood at the foot of the bed. Pillows were still stacked neatly; the cream-colored comforter, which she could see only because of the slashes of moonlight that filtered through the windows, was still smoothed over the mattress. It was a huge four-poster bed made of heavy oak. Tami had always thought it looked regal, like the queen slept here. Betty Butler was the queen of Tami’s life.
And this was the bed Tami was going to sleep in tonight. Just as she had so many nights before.
She walked around to the other side of the bed—the left side, because Grandma Betty always slept on the right. And she was just about to climb up into the bed when her foot smacked into something on the floor.
“Dammit!” The word shot out of her mouth as she hopped back and lifted her foot into her hand. When tears sprang to her eyes this time, it was because it felt like her toe might fall off after it finished throbbing from whatever she’d just kicked. “Shoot. Shoot! Dammit!” she continued before finally leaning against the bed and closing her eyes, hoping to will the pain away.
It didn’t, but then curiosity got the best of her, and she stepped back away from the bed to look down at the culprit. It was a box.
She reached over to the nightstand and turned on the lamp. Soft, golden light bathed the space now, and she could see it was a light-brown box with swirling green vines and huge bright-white magnolias printed over it. The damn thing was also heavy as hell as she picked it up and set it onto the bed. Then she climbed onto the king-size bed that, as a girl, she’d thought was too high off the floor. As an adult standing at five feet, two inches, it was still too damn high off the floor. So there’dbeen a moment of getting onto the bed and then settling herself back so that her feet no longer touched the floor.
Without preamble, she opened the box, and her heart thudded at the hundreds of envelopes she saw inside. Yellowed and tattered envelopes, some with postmarks and stamps, others plain but for the scrawling, teacherly handwriting she recognized as Grandma Betty’s. If Yvonne were here, she’d most likely say something about privacy. Lana would agree with Yvonne, but her eyes would still be wide with curiosity. Tami would still do exactly what she had just done—pick up an envelope, open it, and pull out a letter. Because if there’s one thing she knew for certain, it was that people didn’t leave their private stuff out for anybody to trip over and read. Now, of course, these were different circumstances, and for the life of her, she’d never recalled seeing this box in Grandma Betty’s room before, which likely meant it was private to her grandmother. But now it was here, which also meant that Grandma Betty had probably left it out for someone to see.
For Tami to see, because this had always been Tami’s side of the bed.
With a smile and a swipe of the back of her hand over the fresh tears that had fallen, Tami settled back against the pillows and began to read:
