The house is as warm and inviting inside as it looks from the outside. Crisp white walls, a light, sky blue ceiling. Old, well worn, but taken care of furniture. It smells like a grandma, but in all the right ways. It makes me wish I’d had a grandmother. My own died when I was only six years old.
We round the corner of the living room into the dining room and kitchen. Elle is helping a woman set things on the table.
“Lula, I hope you don’t mind that I have a guest tonight,” Ian says as he places his hands on the back of a chair. I stand there uncomfortably.
The woman turns, and I see her face for the first time.
It’s impossible not to notice the wrinkles first. Folds and canyons and ravines cover her entire body. Dark eyes are hooded and shadowed by her features. Her earlobes are long and dangly. And unlike the kind, motherly woman I was expecting from the house, this woman’s eyes are fierce and dark.
“You got a girlfriend?” she asks, somehow managing to raise an eyebrow as she shuffles across the kitchen to the table with a casserole dish in her weathered hands. Her Southern drawl is strong, and I can barely understand her.
“Uh,” Ian says uncomfortably, scratching the back of his neck. “No. This is Alivia Ryan. She just got into town.”
The woman looks at me, staring me down like she can see into my soul.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say without squirming.
Finally, she gives a grunt and a nod before turning back to retrieve something from the kitchen.
“Don’t worry about her,” Ian whispers in my ear. His closeness makes something in my stomach do a backflip. “She’s pretty crazy and won’t even remember you were here in the morning.”
“She really won’t,” Elle says quietly as she finishes setting the table.
“Oh,” is all I can say in this super awkward situation.
After saying grace, everyone digs into their dinner.
“School starts on Monday, right Elle?” Ian asks around a mouthful of some kind of food that’s so Southern I don’t have a name for it. Since we ate only an hour ago, I’m having a hard time fitting anything else in my stomach.
She nods. “Sophomore year,” she says with a cringe. “Do you think you could drive me into town to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow?”
“I’ll take ‘ya, child,” Lula says. “Been takin’ care of ‘ya fo’ the last how many years? I’ll keep on keepin’ on.”
“Yes, Lula,” Elle says, looking down at her plate with a knowing little smile.
I glance over at Ian. His eyes flit over to mine. “She can’t drive anymore, and hasn’t been able to for quite a few years. Thankfully, her hearing isn’t what it used to be either.”
I look back at her, and she’s staring at her food, munching slowly and deliberately.
We finish our meal and Lula shuffles off to bed, even though it’s barely seven o’clock. Elle clears the table as Ian and I do the dishes.
“How old is your grandmother?” I ask when we’re nearly finished and Elle has said goodnight to go read a book.
“She’s eighty-seven,” Ian says as he dries the last plate and puts it away. I drain the dishwater and dry my hands. Together we walk out to the back porch and sit on the top stair.
“She’s Elle’s caretaker, isn’t she?” I ask quietly as the sun starts to slip toward the trees.
Ian nods. His eyes drop to the steps we sit on. His forearms rest on his knees, his fingers tightly knitted together.
“What happened to your parents, Ian?”
He chews the inside of his lip for a second, and I can feel the gears turning in his head. He picks at a hangnail before finally answering me.
“We lived in this little, crappy house closer to town when I was a kid. It always smelled like swamp, even though we were miles from it. One night when I was ten, I was lying awake, listening to my parents fight for the thousandth time. They fought all the time. Elle was sleeping on the bottom bunk, even though she probably should have been in a crib—she was only two, snoring like a wolf.” He chuckles, his eyes rising to the horizon, and shakes his head.
“There was a loud shatter, like the door being busted down. My mom screamed and dad yelled. There were gunshots.” He swallows and his eyes fall back down again. “I was scared, scared to death. But I climbed out of bed and cracked open the door. It looked right out into the living room. What I saw…there wasn’t any logical explanation for it to a ten year old.”
I know what’s coming and imagining the scene? It’s horrific. I fight the urge to reach out and rub a hand over Ian’s back.