The Death of Me by Yolanda Olson Read Free Book Online Page B

chair. I waited to see if she would say anything else, but she didn't. She just sat there smiling happily at me, stealing glances at Garrett when she thought he wasn't looking. I shook my head in amusement and decided to bring up the subject at hand.
    "So, what's up, Grandma? Why did you want me to come by today?"
    "Garrett, would you mind bringing me that box next to you?" Grandma asked him.
    I glanced past him curiously as he grabbed a small, square wooden box and handed it to Grandma. She asked him to wait while she opened it. I watched her pull out a few envelopes that were tied together, and told him to hand them to me. I held my hands out eagerly and began to untie the envelopes when her voice stopped me.
    "Not now, Zaydee. When you're ready to go leave again; that's when you open those," she said, in the sternest tone she could muster.
    "Yes, Grandma."
    I gave the envelopes to Garrett. If I held them, there would be more than a slight chance that I would wander off to open them and see what was inside.
    "That was a brave thing you did yesterday," Grandma said, glancing at Garrett. "Larry may not have thought so, but I know that Frances would be proud of you and that's all that matters."
    "I thought he was going to die!" I exclaimed.
    Garrett shrugged and leaned forward in his chair. "That secret would come out eventually, but I wanted to honor his wishes of not telling anyone while he was alive."
    "You know, I was a young girl too when I met Frances. That man was the greatest and only love of my life. I miss him every day," she said, her voice cracking slightly.
    The tea kettle started to whistle loudly as the water boiled. I got to my feet and went into the kitchen. I didn't want her to have to get up more than she had too, and I also didn't want her to see the tears that were starting to stream down my face. I used a dish towel to wipe my face clean then used it to pick the kettle up off of the burner.
    I wasn’t crying because Grandma was;  I had lost the empathy part of humanity a long time ago. I was crying because even though she had suffered such a devastating loss, she was trying to find the silver lining in the cloud. Her telling us that she met Grandpa when she was young wasn’t a random fact that was thrown out lightly, and it wasn’t trivia to hold on to for another day. It was her way to try to make us comfortable with whatever decision we made.
    Goddamn it, Greta, I thought as I filled three small china cups with hot water and dropped tea bags into each one.
    If anything really was out in the universe, I could only hope that it would hear me begging for this visit to be as short as possible.

Thirteen
    I t was two o’clock in the afternoon by the time we left Grandma’s. She sat in her chair and told us the story of her and Grandpa while we listened, drinking our tea.
    Apparently, she had met him when she was fourteen years old and he was eighteen, but times were different then, as she put it. Also, she said she knew she wanted to marry him from the moment she saw him so no one could really tell her to stay away from him. I snuck glances at Garrett who had been smiling pleasantly as Grandma took us down memory lane, and I could only hope that he didn’t think it was the same with us.
    I had a moment of weakness earlier today and I honestly didn’t think I would repeat the mistake. It was what had gotten me into this clusterfuck of moving all the way to the other side of the United States to begin with.
    It was also the reason I was an absentee mother, a recluse, a self loather, and had such hatred for humanity. But as he drove me back to my hotel, I couldn’t find it in me to crush his high spirits.
    “I think we should go to Phoenix,” Garrett said when he pulled into the hotel parking lot.
    “For what?” I asked in confusion.
    “To meet our son,” he said giving me a pointed look.
    “Oh.”
    Oh! How could I forget already that he was in Phoenix?
    “No,” I replied thoughtfully running