Sour Grapes (The Blue Plate Series) by Rachel Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

crowed ten minutes ago,” she says. “Linens need washin’, the silver needs polishin’, and the back porch needs paintin’. More wrinkles are carvin’ into my face every second you lie there.” Her voice is impatient, but somehow she still manages to stretch out the vowels and meander around the consonants.
    I groan. I came to the bed-and-breakfast for escape, not to do manual labor. Besides, this is why cleaning services and contractors exist.
    “The laundry isn’t goin’ to fold itself,” Grammy J says. “Out of bed.”
    “Tomorrow.” I need one day without people barking orders at me or telling me how to act, one day where I can just forget everything and relax. “I’ll do it all tomorrow.” I pat around for something to shield my eyes from the sun but come up empty.
    Grammy J sighs, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a garden spade. She taps a foot on the floorboards, loosening some of the soil caked on her galoshes. Dirt footprints mark a trail from the hallway to the bed. Her pant legs are soaked, the denim bleeding from a navy to a crisp blue. Perhaps she was planting vegetables. In the midst of my tripping incident last night I didn’t get a good look at her, but now I see the years have aged her, made her skinnier and frailer, with a freckled nose and rosy cheeks that wished they could tan if not for her fair complexion. Her once-vibrant red hair has faded into strawberry blonde.
    She scrutinizes me, her expression sharpened by the creases around her green eyes and mouth. For a moment, I swear I’m staring at my mother in twenty years—well, if I ignore the fact that my mother wouldn’t be caught dead with a bandana around her forehead or with dirt beneath her fingernails; gardening is only fit for the hired help. I brace myself in preparation for the onslaught of criticism coming my way. What were you thinking causing all that racket? You behaved like a drunken fool, Margaret. An embarrassment to this family.
    Only Grammy J says none of this. “You want to stay here, you earn your keep.” She turns and heads for the door, pausing beside my luggage heaped in a pile in the middle of the floor. She purses her lips. “And take a shower, child. I can smell you from downstairs.”
    She disappears before I realize she didn’t ask why I’m here or seem surprised, despite not having seen me since the day of Poppa Bart’s funeral sixteen years ago. The same day I was cuffed and thrown into the back of a cop car for a stupid lapse in judgment. The same day my mother and Grammy J had a falling-out nobody discusses, the secret they share the only lifeline connecting them.
    I once asked my mother what happened. It’s the only time I can recall unguarded, raw emotion on her face, but rather than a verbal attack like I expected, she simply walked away in an intimidating way that was worse than yelling. In that moment, I remember wishing my mother would berate me. At least then I’d know how to act, given all my years of experience. Later, after she’d gone to bed and my father and I were alone, he told me that sometimes there’s a reason people change and why they keep secrets and not to bring up the subject again. It wasn’t a surprise when he promised to smooth things over with my mother the next morning—my father had practically made a second career of keeping her happy—but the fact that he looked troubled as he did so, as though whatever bothered her was something deep and painful, got my attention.
    I wonder now, if my mother discovered I’m in Wilhelmsburg, if she’d cut me out of her life as effectively and efficiently as she did Grammy J, but more important, would I want her to?
    As I listen to the sound of Grammy J’s footsteps growing fainter on the stairs, I stare at the trees outside, a chorus of birds darting off into the sky, and contemplate going back to sleep. But Grammy J’s worse than a telemarketer when it comes to pestering people, so ignoring her is futile. My body