The Summer Garden by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

change,” she said, her voice turning sad. “I think Christmas was probably my last visit to Ireland.”
    Once again Luke had the sense that there was much more to the story that she wasn’t telling him. “Gram, what’s going on?”
    After only the faintest flicker of despondency on her face, something so brief he couldn’t even be sure he’d seen it, her expression brightened. “Not a thing,” she said. “I’m just being realistic. It’s a long way to go at my age.”
    “Are you sure Dillon will want to pack up and leave the life he’s always known?”
    “I’m certain of only one thing,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “The only way to know a thing like that is to ask, and I intend to do just that. It’s advice you might consider taking to heart.”
    Though the obvious inference would have been to assume she was talking about the call she’d advised him to make to determine the measurements of the bar, Luke knew better. It was her subtle way of reminding him not to wait too long to ask Moira to be a part of his life.
    What bothered him wasn’t that she’d made the suggestion, but the urgency he sensed behind it and behind her own plan to invite Dillon to stay. Something was wrong, and he knew in his gut he needed to find out what it was. What he didn’t know was how he was going to pull that off without offending his grandmother’s independent spirit.
    Everyone in the family credited Jo O’Brien with being the most practical, sensible O’Brien aside from Nell. Luke was still in awe of how well his mother had handled Susie’s ovarian cancer and kept everyone else from falling apart. He concluded that she was his best bet to get to the bottom of what was going on with his grandmother.
    She was easy enough to track down. After school, where she was both a teacher and a women’s track coach, she was usually at practice with her team. Luke found her standing at the edge of the track with a stopwatch in one hand and a whistle in the other. With her hair caught up in a messy ponytail and dressed in jeans and a hoodie on the cool early May afternoon, she looked little older than her students.
    “Hey, Mom!” he called out as he joined her.
    Barely taking her eyes off the track for more than a split second, she gave him a smile. “What brings you by? I thought you were swamped getting the pub ready to open.”
    “I am, but I need to talk to you. Can you spare a couple of minutes? If not now, could you drop by the pub when you’re finished here?”
    She must have heard something in his voice, because she blew her whistle to get the attention of the girls. “That’s it, ladies. It was a good practice. Take your showers and head on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    When they were finally on their way, she gestured toward the bleachers, then followed Luke over. “What’s up?”
    “I’m worried about Gram,” he blurted. “Something’s going on with her, and I don’t think she’s told anyone about it.”
    His mother regarded him with surprise. “Are you sure? She’s seemed fine to me when I’ve seen her the past few Sundays.”
    “She can put on a good show for a couple of hours,” he said. “I’ve been spending more time with her lately. She’s said a couple of things. When I called her on one of them, she told me I wasn’t to blab.”
    “And yet here you are,” Jo said. “Since I know you wouldn’t break your word lightly, what exactly has happened?”
    He told her about the casual mention of blood pressure medicine, then today’s incident, when Nell had seemed overheated and short of breath. “It doesn’t sound like much when I say it, but that’s not all. She was talking about wanting Dillon to stay on here, about not being able to make another trip to Ireland herself. She sounded—I don’t know—resigned or something.”
    To his relief—yet in a way his regret—his mother didn’t laugh off his concerns. “That doesn’t sound like Nell,” she conceded.