“What did she do to you?”
“Nothing. I hid under the bed until Papa got home. She got the broomstick to try to get me out, but she couldn’t reach when I got into the corner. And he didn’t care about the car.”
“Explains a lot,” I muttered.
She shrugged. “You can worry about the small stuff, or you can live your life. Papa believed in living.”
I pulled the car toward the left as we neared the rest stop. “I could use a coffee.”
“If you’re getting tired, I can drive.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Because I crashed into a movie theater over eighty years ago?”
“Because you don’t have a license!”
“You and my mother would have gotten along. No fun at all.”
“I’m fun!” My grandmother raised an eyebrow, and I felt my shoulders slump. “Okay, maybe not these days. But normally I am.”
“I’m sure you are, dear.” She patted my arm. “No one said you weren’t.”
“You just—oh, never mind.” I decided to make the coffee a venti.
After parking and helping my grandma undo her seatbelt, I stood on the sidewalk to wait, then realized she was struggling to get out of the car. I went to the passenger side and noticed a large scrape down the side. “Do you need help?”
If looks could kill, she would have been the only one left to drive the car. “I do not need anything.”
“Of course not.” I remembered my mother’s warning and the fact that my grandmother had a bad hip. “My legs are really stiff after being in the car that long. I’m here if you just feel like taking my hand.”
She peered up, checking for sarcasm in my response, but when she saw none, she put a spotted and wrinkled hand in mine and allowed me to heave her up. Once on her feet, she shrugged me off, but I kept my pace slow to match hers. She was really going to try to do this alone, I thought, shaking my head. My mother always told me to smother her with a pillow before she got as bad as Grandma, which I had thought was melodramatic, but if my mother turned into this? Yikes.
After a visit to the restroom, we waited in the Starbucks line together. “I hate that you can’t use the app at rest stops,” I complained.
“What’s an app?”
“It’s a . . . I don’t know . . . a thing on your phone. And you can preorder at pretty much every other Starbucks.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“So you don’t have to wait in line.”
“If you don’t want to wait, just go to the front of the line.”
“You can’t do that.”
Her mouth curled into a grin. “I can.” Shaking off my attempt to put a hand on her arm, she walked right up to the front of the line. “Excuse me,” she said to the man standing there. He looked about thirty and was staring at his phone screen. “I’m almost ninety years old. Do you think I could go ahead of you?”
“I—um—yes, ma’am. Of course.”
She reached up and patted his cheek. “Such a polite young man. Your grandma must be so proud of you.” She turned back to me. “Come on. We need to get back on the road.”
“Excuse me. I’m sorry,” I said, mortified.
“It’s fine,” he said, gesturing to the waiting barista.
“A venti skinny caramel macchiato.” I turned to my grandmother. “What do you want?”
“A coffee. Did you order food? I’d take one of those triangle things.”
“What kind of coffee?”
“The coffee kind.”
I shot an apologetic look at the people in line behind us. “Okay, what size?”
“What size are you getting?”
“Venti.”
“Vanity? Really? I wasn’t flirting with him. I just wanted some coffee.”
“No, Grandma, a venti is a large.”
“Then why didn’t you say large?”
I looked in horror at the now significantly longer line behind us. “Okay, do you want a large?”
“What would I do with a large? I’d never sleep again.”
“Oh, for the love of—what size coffee do you want?”
“A small, darling.”
“Do you want anything with flavors or an espresso drink?”
“Hmmm, I don’t know. What flavors are there?”
I threw my hands up, exasperated. “She’ll have a tall drip and a blueberry scone.”