Page 40 of The Cadence

I watched carefully, alert for any clues about proper behavior. It was a tactic I’d learned after moving in with my grandma and discovering that, in terms of manners, I was more like a feral dog than a polite human.

She picked up the napkin that was folded next to her plate and smoothed it carefully over her lap, and then she took a small sip from her glass. It was iced tea but not how I was used to it, and I tried not to purse my lips at the bitter taste as I copied her movements.

Then she looked across the table and smiled at me, and I smiled back. “Thank you for coming, Calla.”

“It’s my pleasure, Miss Sloane,” I responded. Oh, that had come out with a lot of enthusiasm and had sounded much too loud for her quiet house. I took another sip of the unsweetened iced tea and calmed down.

“When you picked up my old bureau, I tried to connect you with my granddaughter,” she recalled. “I asked you how someone your age would make friends, and I thought having lunch together was a good way to get to know someone.”

“This lunch is a great way for us to get to know each other,” I told her. “I’m glad you asked me over.” I had been surprised, too, but suspected that it had something to do with her granddaughter Kirsten.

It did. Miss Sloane asked me questions about my life here as we ate the salads she had made, and she liked looking at the pictures of my furniture and of the renovations that Annie was accomplishing in the guest cottage.

But she did steer the conversation around to Kirsten, and it was clear that topic was where her interest lay.

She sat up straighter and frowned a little as she spoke about her, and I interpreted that as worry.

“My granddaughter tells me that you’re good friends with her boyfriend. Cully.” She spoke his name with a deeper frown, which I now interpreted as dislike.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re good friends,” I cautioned. We were definitely getting back on the track of friendship after the post-dinner party arguments we’d had, but he was annoying me, too. He stubbornly refused to listen to anything I said about Kirsten, all the good advice I was offering.

“What makes you the expert? What’s your relationship history, Calla?” he’d demanded a few days before. It was true that my own experience was mostly observational but he still needed to hear me, because I was concerned.

After Kirsten’s heroic actions surrounding the frozen eggplant, they’d kicked things up to even a higher level.

Just yesterday, he’d scared me out of my mind.

“What do you think about me becoming a dad?” Cully had casually asked, and I’d choked on the apple I was eating.

No, she wasn’t currently pregnant, but it was something they were discussing.

Miss Sloane was obviously not a fan of her granddaughter’s boyfriend, which I quickly understood as she started to run through a list of his flaws. She didn’t have to think much as she enumerated them all, which told me that she’d been going over that mental list a lot.

There were problems big and small. “He seems lazy and unmotivated. His interests are only gaming and adding more flash to the car he drives, and he has no plans for the future.”

I thought of Cully’s question to me about fatherhood and kept my mouth shut about his future plans.

“He’s consistently late to pick up my granddaughter,” she continued. “When I had him here for dinner, he chewed with his mouth open.”

I glanced quickly at my fork and resolved to be even more careful with my manners.

She had more to say, too. “When they’re together, they’re all over each other. I understand physical attraction, but I don’t need to see it. Constantly.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I sympathized.

Our manager at the grocery store had spoken to him about that several times, because it had become a much larger problem than his phone usage.

Kirsten had been coming around a lot to visit and they weren’t bothering to go out to the loading dock.

When they were together, you didn’t need to turn on the heat in the building.

“Kirsten is still insisting that they have to live together,” Miss Sloane continued. “Frankly, I don’t care for the idea and neither do her parents.”

“Shouldn’t they be the ones to reel her in?” I asked.

Now she looked embarrassed. “My son and his wife seem to have given up on her,” she admitted. “I’ve stepped in, in loco parentis .”

The whole situation was a little loco . “She mentioned to me that you were going to buy a house for her.”

“I want my granddaughter to settle down,” she said. “I thought that if Kirsten had a permanent place and I could be involved in her life, then she would begin to listen to my advice about returning to school and getting a job.”

It seemed like a stretch. I shrugged a little.

“Also, I really enjoy having her here,” she went on. “For so many years, I’ve only been able to see her sporadically and it’s been wonderful to get to know her better. She breathes a lot of energy into this house.”

“I understand that,” I said, nodding. “I lived with my grandma and she always…sorry.” I was never going to stop crying about her, I had realized. I cleared my throat. “Is there something I can help you with, Miss Sloane?”

“If you were me,” she said slowly, “how would you handle this?”

My index finger flew up to point at my chest. “You really want my advice?”

“You know them both,” she answered. “And you’re their age, but you seem so much more mature.”

“I had to be more mature because I took care of myself for a long time,” I explained. “I’ve tried to talk to them and neither will listen, but…” I hesitated. “If I were you, there are a few things I would try.” I gave her my ideas.

“You bitch!”

I had been expecting some anger after my conversation with Miss Sloane went public, and here it was. The day after we’d had that lunch, I walked into the grocery store and Kirsten bore down on me from the direction of the bakery department. She was obviously furious. “Bitch!” she hissed again.

“Let me put away my pocketbook,” I requested, but she was more interested in fighting right here in public. The store was starting to get more crowded as the weekend approached, even if it was another out-of-town game. There would be no tailgating but there were still snacks to be made.

She stomped as she followed me toward the back and didn’t lower her volume at all. “How dare you tell my grandmother to take back her money? How are we supposed to get a house now? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

I turned and put my hand over her mouth.

“Stop yelling. It’s not polite when you’re inside,” I said sternly.

“Your grandmother asked me to come have lunch because she’s so worried.

If she doesn’t want to buy a house for you, then that’s her decision.

” It had been my advice that Miss Sloane needed to turn off the financial tap and rescind her offer of financing their property purchase, and she had chosen to listen.

“It’s her money, so she gets to do what she wants with it! ”

Kirsten shoved my arm away. “Remember that I saved you from a molester!” she shouted.

“Stop yelling or I’ll put my hand back,” I warned.

“I thanked you and I also made you a batch of cookies that you liked a lot. I really appreciated it. I also think that you’ll come to appreciate how your grandma is looking out for you and your future.

” Another thing that I had suggested would make Kirsten safer: she would have to get a driver’s license, or she would not be allowed to take any of the cars on the road.

She would need to return to college, either the one she’d attended before or the one nearby, or she had to get a full-time job.

If she didn’t, she would go back to live with her parents somewhere near The City.

“She’s not trying to control you…well, she is,” I conceded, “but only because you need some control. She’s setting standards because she loves you.”

“My grandma doesn’t love me! If she did, she’d want me to be happy,” she retorted. She’d still been too loud, but at least she wasn’t yelling anymore. “I’ll only be happy if I live with Cully.”

“Like heck she doesn’t love you!” I said. “Why is she trying to make you finish your degree?”

“She wants me to be bored.”

“No, she wants you to set yourself up for success for the rest of your life. She does want you to be happy and that’s also why she doesn’t want you and Cully to live together. She’s afraid that if you do, you’ll break up.”

In fact, I was pretty sure that Miss Sloane would have been glad if they’d split and she had no thoughts about trying to shore up their relationship.

But I’d had a revelation while I was driving here for my shift.

The only reason that Kirsten wanted to live with him was to make him love her, to force him into really feeling it.

It made sense that threatening the opposite effect would make her think twice about the idea.

“We’re very happy together,” she announced. “That won’t change!” But I watched her face, and her expression moved from anger into contemplation. “Why would we break up?”

“When you live with someone, you find out everything about them,” I answered. “Are you ready to show him all that? All your flaws?”

“What flaws?” Kirsten challenged angrily, but then she contemplated more. “One thing I like to do is eat hard-boiled eggs with anchovy paste,” she said slowly. “My grandmother made a few comments about how that smells.”

I was nearly gagging from the thought of that snack.

“Cully might think it was weird,” she continued. “And he might not like it that I only paint my toenails while I’m naked.”

“No, he would probably like that a lot. But do you see what I mean?” I prompted her. “If you don’t want him to know everything about you, then you can’t live with him. Because he will find out.”