The corners of her mouth rose into a frighteningly determined grin, her eyes lighting at the challenge. “Isn’t he a groomsman in Megan’s wedding?” I nodded. “And aren’t you giving a speech at that wedding?”
I looked away. “I don’t know anymore.”
“What did Megan say?”
“I haven’t talked to her yet.”
“Lily! She’s been your friend for how many years?”
I looked back up, bemused. “And you wanted your apology before Madison’s?”
She waved a hand in the air. “You have to talk to Megan.”
“I’m going to.” It was too complicated to explain why I wasn’t ready yet.
“Good. Then you can use your speech to win him back.” She kept talking, pacing as she formulated her plan of how I would convince Alex to love me back, and I watched her. This strange, indomitable woman whose body I came from. She would never understand defeat—I didn’t think it was even in her vocabulary—any more than she would understand why using my maid of honor speech （if I was still giving one） to win Alex back would only prove to everyone, including Alex, that I had learned nothing.
Instead of arguing, I nodded, thanked her, and kissed her on the cheek when I rose to leave. She grabbed me in a tight hug and whispered in my ear, “They conquer who believe they can.” My mother was a paradox to the last—make a Shakespeare reference and she told you to speak English, yet here she was, whispering a quote from a two-thousand-years-dead philosopher. And if I mentioned Virgil, she would respond, “Who? I saw that on a pillow at Home Goods.”
She would never acknowledge the rest of what I said. It would have confused her own sense of self. But this was enough for now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I still couldn’t bring myself to call Megan, so I called my grandmother from my parents’ driveway.
“It’s Lily,” I said.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Apparently I only call my eldest granddaughter Joan.”
“Can I come over?”
“Why? Do you need more material? Should I invite my mah-jongg club over too so you can write about them?”
“Please, Grandma?”
“Suit yourself.”
But despite the attitude over the phone, her front door was open behind the screen door when I arrived, as it always was when I was expected.
“Grandma?” I called as I came in.
“In the kitchen, Joan.” I didn’t correct her. “Are you hungry? I made a cake.” She was sitting at the table, reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, the newspaper in front of her.
I started to refuse, then realized I was famished and said I would love a slice. She stood, but I told her I would get it, and I cut one for each of us, then brought them over on two tea plates.
“I’m really sorry, Grandma.”
“For what, darling?”
I was genuinely confused—did she not remember? That happened sometimes with her, but my mother always assured us it was just old age, not Alzheimer’s—the same way she didn’t ever remember our names. Or was she being difficult and planning to extract a more detailed apology by playing dumb?
“For—the blog.”
“You got stuck in a bog?”
“Blog. The—the thing I wrote?”
“Oh, the Google thing your mother sent me?”
“I—uh—yeah, probably.”
“It was very nice. But I don’t understand what a blog is.”
“It’s a—oh God, how do I explain it? It’s kind of like a place where you can publish the stuff you write for people to read on the internet?”
“Like the Facebook?”
“No—not exactly—I mean—” How to explain it to a woman who called the internet “the Google” and who insisted, when she had me make her a Facebook page, that I use a picture of her from when she was a dozen years younger than I was now because she looked too old in all the others? “Yes, it’s like Facebook. But for longer stuff that you write.”
“In my day, we wrote letters.”
I debated explaining that this was much more public, but that wouldn’t help my cause any. “Um. Yeah. But I wanted to apologize for what I wrote.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I wasn’t very nice in it.”
“It sounds like those girls owe you apologies, not the other way around.”
“I meant for the parts about you.”
She tilted her head at me. “I don’t follow.”