Exposed by Jessica Love

Author:Jessica Love [Love, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Green Darner Press
Published: 2014-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

Part IV

When the call came that would change my life — again — I saw the number and I didn’t answer. But when I listened to the message and heard the tone in my mother’s voice, I called her back immediately.

“Jessi… ” she started to say, then stopped.

“Mother?” I asked. I’d stopped calling her “Mom” after the blow up over my divorce from Mark.

“Your grandmother has passed away,” she said. For a moment I thought she was talking about her mother, who I didn’t really know that well.

“Mom, I’m so sorry for your loss…” I started to say, hoping that reverting to the familiar would lend sincerity to my words. Then suddenly I realized it wasn’t her mother she was talking about, but my grandmother, Grandmama, Grandmere.

“Oh God. Mom, what happened? Why didn’t I know?!”

“None of us knew, honey,” said Mom. “She kept getting a bit more frail. We suggested she see a doctor, but she just blew up her lips and said ‘No doctor. I know medicine. I am old. I know what to do.’ You know how stubborn she could be.

“I took her a bowl of chowder this morning. You know it’s the only thing I cook she would eat. She didn’t answer the door. I went around back, and she was sitting in her kitchen chair, but her head was down. I knew something wasn’t right. The doctor said her heart just stopped, and she didn’t even know.”

By the time my mother stopped talking I had slid down the wall to the floor. I could not breathe. My eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sand, then lemon.

“Honey… ?” My mom said.

“I’ll call you back,” I whispered.

I should have known, I told myself. I should have been there, I said. I should have seen her more often, I said. I should should should should should…

“Jessi!” said Grandmere, sharply in my ear. “There is no ‘should!’”

Startled, I looked around. Of course I couldn’t see her. She had died. But I could feel her. She was sitting next to me on the floor, her hand on my shoulder. “Come see me now,” she whispered. “I am waiting for you. I have something for you.”

I got up and washed my face, threw some clothes in a bag and jumped in my replacement Porsche. It wasn’t new, but it was like new. It wasn’t like I’d spent all the money I’d been earning over the last few years or from the divorce settlement. I still had a pretty good stash. The trip home over the back roads was slow as I tried to remember as many of the moments Grandmere and I had spent together as I could.

I didn’t stop at my parents,’ driving right to her house, hoping to decompress before seeing “the family.” It didn’t work. At the house were my father’s truck, the Japanese car my mother drove that I could never remember because I didn’t care, my sister’s minivan, and the pickup driven by her husband that he had bought from my father because “I know it’s been taken care of.

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