The Salt House by Lisa Duffy

Author:Lisa Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

 14

Kat

Grandma was going back to Florida in a couple of weeks and moving in with Roger, and Mom was saying that she hadn’t heard anything as ridiculous as that in a long time. They were in the kitchen, and when Mom said this, Grandma patted my arm, in a soothing sort of way, like I was the one getting spoken to.

My cereal was getting soggy, but I didn’t want to crunch too loud and miss something. I hadn’t seen Mom this fired up since that night she fought with Dad.

“Tell me you’re not serious,” Mom said.

“Why would I say it if I wasn’t serious?” Grandma gave her a puzzled look.

“You’ve only been dating for a year!”

“We’ve been dating for a year and a half, and I’ve known him for ten. Longer than I knew your father before I married him. For the record.”

I’d never met my grandfather. He died when mom was Jess’s age, but this seemed to make Mom even madder.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means time is irrelevant when it comes to love. I knew your father ten minutes, and I wanted to marry him. And we’d still be going strong if he was here.”

“But why now? I mean, it’s sort of out of the blue.” Mom squeezed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It was a habit she got from Grandma, but I didn’t think it was the right time to point that out.

“Well, because he asked,” Grandma said. “Just last night. He asked and I said yes.” She took a sip of her coffee, winked at me over the rim of the mug. “I’ve lived alone for thirty years. A lot of those years I spent missing your father. There wasn’t room for anyone else. And now I feel that there is. And you know what I always say. So much of life is just finding that balance. The balance of holding on and letting go.”

Mom put her chin in her hand. “You do say that. All the time, you say it.”

“Well, I say it because it’s true. Those words helped me enormously after your father died.” Grandma looked at me. “Did your mother ever tell you this story?”

“Here we go,” Mom said.

“She was sixteen,” Grandma said to me, pointing at Mom. “And dead set on not moving out of Alden, away from her friends. I didn’t have a job, any family of my own up here. My parents were livid that I wasn’t coming back home to Alabama with their only grandchild. Livid! My father could have bought and sold Alabama twice over with his money, and he told me he wouldn’t give us a dime unless we moved back. It didn’t matter to them what was best for you. Or me. I was almost forty years old by then. Can you imagine moving back home after you’ve had a husband and a child. A life!”

I didn’t know if this was a question, but she was looking at me, so I shook my head.

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