“I figured,” she jabbed playfully over the brim of the cup. “She makes you blush.”
“What?” I rubbed my palm against my cheek. “Nah … it's—”
“It's cute,” she said, finishing my sentence with a teasing grin.
Then, she sighed, resting her chin in her hand and staring across the table at me with a wistful, melancholy look in her eyes. I didn't know what to make of it, just as I hadn't known what to do with her reactions back in the cemetery or the sad confession she’d made just minutes before. So, I shifted in my seat and smiled uncomfortably before bringing my coffee to my lips and taking a long pull.
Then, she dropped her hand to the table and gripped her cup as she said, “I remember this one time, years ago, when I dropped Billy off at your grandparents' house. Your mother was God knows where. I watched you boys run upstairs to your room, and I said to your grandmother, 'Do you ever wonder what's going to happen to him?' And I … I don't know why I said it. It was probably an awful thing to say, and I probably should've kept it to myself, but I always worried about you, and I know your grandparents did too.
“Anyway, your grandmother said, 'As long as I'm around, he'll have the best damn life I can give him, and I just have to hope that'll be enough to carry him through when I'm gone.' And I was just thinking about that—about how she'd be happy to see you now, to know that whatever she and your grandfather had done was truly enough.”
My throat constricted around a toughened ball of emotion. I hadn't expected her to drop emotional bombs like these. I hadn't expected her to mention Gramma and Grampa. God, I could talk about my mother forever without shedding a tear, but bring Gramma and Grampa into the conversation, and I could easily turn into a blubbering baby. But then she’d had to mention them being proud of me now, after everything …
Fuck, it was laughable, honestly.
“I don't …” I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I don't think they'd think too highly of me, personally …”
“No.” She shook her head, keeping her gaze soft. “Some horrible mistakes were made, yes, but you were never lost to them, Soldier, and that's what matters. That's what made you who you are today; that's why you are where you are now. You said it was luck before, but, no, there's nothing lucky about it. It comes down to you and your good heart and soul and nothing more than that. And that … that was your grandparents, and it was obviously enough. More than enough even. They would be so proud of you, and I am too.”
***
“Something that’s important to remember,” Laura said as she lifted the apple fritter she’d been tempted by to her mouth, “is that your mother and I aren’t the same age. She’s six or seven years younger than me, so we didn’t exactly run in the same social circles.”
I couldn’t help but huff a bitter laugh. “I highly doubt you’d have hung out with the same people as Diane anyway.”
Laura winced after taking a bite, her eyes full of apology. I knew she had spent years in cahoots with my grandparents, on a mission to protect me from the inevitable turmoil my mother would have on my life. I also knew she had felt like a failure, just as Mrs. Henderson had, when none of them were to blame. Nobody was. Just me, my choices, and those made by my mother.
“In any case,” she continued after swallowing, “I would see her around town, but I didn’t really get to know her until you and Billy became friends in preschool.”
“And that’s how you knew David?” I asked, eager to know more about this man I’d never heard of.
She studied the golden-brown crumbles on top of the fritter as she nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah,” she said, drawing the word out. “David was … well, I heard David was a good kid, growing up. I have no idea if that was true or not—again, I didn’t really know him well, personally—but from what I heard around town and from your grandparents, he had started life as a good kid. But your mother had a habit of getting in trouble, and David developed a habit of always being around her …”
That was interesting. I had assumed it’d been the other way around. I had expected to find out that my mother had been the good one, destined for greatness, thanks to my grandparents, until she got wrapped up with the wrong crowd. To hear that she had been the troublemaker from the start was all at once startling and yet … not.
“I was my grandparents’ second chance,” I muttered almost to myself, staring at my second cup of coffee, half full and cooling in the air-conditioning.
Laura hummed a contemplative sound. “I think so. I know they blamed themselves for your mother, and when you came along, they thought you’d be her saving grace. Honestly, I think she thought so too—”
“She always used to say I was supposed to save her,” I told her, my glare hardening on the coffee cup. “So, I did, and that’s why we’re here.”
Laura nodded somberly, not needing me to elaborate as she went on. “Well, the truth was, it was everyone that needed saving from your mother, and I believe you saved your grandparents. You saved them from the guilt; you gave them someone to love them back for everything they did. But, unfortunately for David, nobody was there to save him. He had been arrested a couple of times, I think—”
“Yes.” I nodded, staring off toward a shelf full of antique books. “I found a few articles about his arrests. Public intoxication, graffiti—nothing too crazy, and from what I read, he hadn’t done any time, other than a few overnights in—”
“His father was a cop,” Laura informed me, her stare pinning me to the spot.
Well, that made me sit up taller.
“Wait. What?”
She nodded, exaggerating the movement of her head to her chest. “Matthew Stratton was a cop.”
“Shit. That explains a lot,” I murmured, thinking of Levi and the shit he had managed to get away with.
“Yep,” she agreed, and somehow, I knew we were referring to the same thing. “And that night, when your mother and David got into the accident, David’s father made sure she was let off the hook despite the car being full of her drugs.”
“Nothing was found in her system,” I said, reciting only what I’d read.
Laura shrugged with a doubtful expression on her face. “Yeah, that’s what they said, but knowing your mother …”
Gramma and Grampa must have known she’d been wasted that night. God, of course she had been—how could I, her fucking son, have believed any different? And really, what was the likelihood that her boyfriend, sitting behind the wheel, had been intoxicated and not her?
“Do you think my grandparents knew?” I asked, wondering too much how far they’d been willing to go to protect their daughter.
Laura released a heavy breath and closed her eyes. “Soldier, I believe your grandparents had a lot of hope that she would one day shake those demons off her back, and I believe they went to some pretty great lengths to try and give her as many chances as they could to make that recovery possible.”
I could only imagine what she was implying, and those images filtering through my mind brought my fists to clench against the table. Laura laid one of her hands over one of those fists and squeezed her fingers around it.