We were family, after all. Maybe I didn’t like her yet and maybe she didn’t like me yet, and maybe we would never really and truly like each other, but that didn’t change shit. She was here, and she seemed to truly love Jonah in her own way I wasn’t totally feeling, and she was being all about Mo, so….
“My grandpa divorced that lady when Marcus, my dad, was five, and she wasn’t really in their lives after that. She moved somewhere else, and after he turned eighteen, they never saw her again until she showed up at my family’s gym a few weeks ago.”
Jonah was for sure watching me as I drove, but I didn’t dare glance at him.
But in the back seat Sarah made a noise that sounded somewhere in between shock and outrage, and that surprised the fucking shit out of me. “I don’t mean to be intrusive—”
Sure she didn’t.
“—or be rude and make assumptions, but you’re at least in your late twenties, and you have never met your own grandmother until recently?”
“Correct,” I confirmed, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Today is the second time I’ve ever seen her.”
“I’m sorry for asking about such an upstanding family member. I don’t see how any person could leave their child, or grandchild, their own flesh and blood, like that. I would never be able to do that.”
“Me neither,” I agreed with her, glancing in the rearview mirror again and catching her eyes.
Luckily I hadn’t expected that little moment to change anything, because it hadn’t. Thirty minutes later, Sarah had criticized the bottles we were giving Mo and then tried to grill me on what we were feeding her. I started zoning her out ten seconds in.
But I wasn’t bothering with that. I knew we were doing our best and had done a lot of research on everything we used on her and for her. Sarah meant well, and I wasn’t going to get pissed off for her giving a shit about my daughter.
Apparently Jonah was well aware of that because he gave me a playfully exasperated face at me playing dumb by answering my previous question. “The conversation with your granddad’s ex-wife, Len. I want to know you’re okay with it.”
I eyed my stress ball but kept my hand on my lap.
“Not that all right then, I’ll take it,” the man who probably saw and understood too much—obviously since he was bringing it up—claimed easily and carefully.
Opening up my mouth to say that I was all right, I shut it right back. Because I’d be lying if I said I was. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t even been able to tell Peter or Grandpa about that conversation because I didn’t trust myself to explain it in a reasonable voice. I could tell them anything and everything. Every cell in my body knew that.
But, that… that I hadn’t been able to share. That I had let settle in my chest to pick up and look at while I had stood under the shower that night once everyone had left. Jonah and his mom had bounced after spending all day with me and Mo at the house. Natia had showed up in the afternoon, and I found that I really fucking liked Jonah’s sister. She was cool as shit. Even Luna had showed up with Ava and her husband, and we’d all had dinner together.
It had been the first time that my best friend met Jonah, and the second she’d gotten a chance, she’d elbowed me in the ribs and given me an enormous grin. She’d texted me from home that night and said he was great and even Rip had mentioned liking Jonah. But my favorite message had been:
Luna: And he’s better looking in person, Lenny. WOO.
It had been a nice day that had made me forget all about Rafaela and her bullshit. So it wasn’t until the shower that I’d let myself think about her. Then I’d thrown that moment in the park with my grandmother into the imaginary trash after thinking it over while I’d washed and conditioned my hair.
Until now.
“I just….” My voice came out a little high. “I’m fine.”
The look he gave me was enough for him to not have to verbally call me out on my bullshit. He wanted me to tell him the truth on my own. Fine.
“I am,” I insisted, trying to think about it. “Realistically, I am. If I don’t see her again, I don’t think I would regret it. I don’t think I would even think about it much. Really.”
His face was so patient. “But?”
Was this my second Peter? Another person about to see a loose end sticking up and decide to pull at it gently to see how much came free? “But,” I continued on, not totally wanting to, “I am a little mad about it.” I thought about it. “Maybe more than a little.”
Jonah didn’t make any kind of physical gesture to get me to keep talking, but the way he just looked, straight, his facial expression totally blank, made me keep going.
“It’s been thirty-one years. Longer than that if you want to be technical. The last time she saw my dad was when he was eighteen, seven whole years before I was born. So that’s a whole lot of time.”
He still didn’t say a word, and I could feel my eyelid get twitchy.
But I didn’t touch it. What I did do instead was keep talking. “She didn’t miss out on anything. She gave it up. She didn’t want it, and that’s the difference.” Fuck it, I reached up and gave my neck a scratch with my index finger, just one quick scratch, and I dropped my hand again. “Who the hell cuts their kid off because of something someone else did? How do you just… leave them behind? I’ve been mad over things. I’ve been hurt. But I would never do some shit like that. She didn’t come talk to me because she wanted to. She only did it to make herself feel better for getting caught.”
Jonah still didn’t say a word, but it made me think about what had just come out of my own mouth.
I scratched at my neck again. “It bothers me more than it should, and I know that. I didn’t even tell Grandpa or Peter what she said. I just said I’d tell them later, but it’s not that easy to talk about someone not wanting you.” I swallowed. “I should be used to it by now though, you’d figure. I shouldn’t let this—her—piss me off. She doesn’t even deserve that.”
Then, then, he decided to finally open his mouth, and when he did, it wasn’t to say the words I might have expected. “There’s nothing wrong with being mad, love. And you shouldn’t be used to… that. None of it is your fault.”
I tried to swallow, I really did, but there was a rock in my throat. Suddenly, a rock the size of a fucking Rhode Island-sized meteor sitting in my throat, blocking anything from going in and everything from leaving.
“She has no idea what she missed out on,” he said in that quiet voice. “Leaves more for us who do know what we have, eh?” Those eyes sparkled. “A good friend. An incredible family member. A loyal, practical, brave woman. One of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”
My entire life, I had never known how to be anything other than how I was. Even if it made other people uncomfortable or mad. That I was too mouthy, too bossy, too determined, too blunt, too much.
Despite all of that, I was and had been loved by a lot of people. People who knew the best and the worst parts of me. Some knew more, some knew less.