Page 153 of Just One More Thing

And if that’s stupid, it’s already done.

Because I can feel it now, plain as anything.

If she leaves, it won’t just break my heart.

It’ll rip through every ordinary part of my life I’m already imagining with her in it.

CHAPTER 37

EMORY

Granny puts on lipstick for her cast removal. Not the emergency tube she keeps in her purse beside mints, cash and opinions.

Lipstick.

Red.

The expensive one, which means in her mind this is an occasion.

“You are not wearing wedges to the orthopedist.”

Granny looks down at her shoe, then back at me over the top of her glasses. “This is not a wedge. This is a sensible summer support shoe.”

“That is absolutely a wedge and too dangerous on one leg.”

She points at me with the lipstick tube. “You have gotten very mouthy since moving back in.”

I lean against the doorway and fold my arms while she blots her lipstick in the compact mirror. “You’ve gotten very dramatic since breaking your leg.”

“Excuse you. I’ve always been dramatic. The leg simply gave me an audience.” She says it with the confidence of a woman who fully believes her cast was less a medical inconvenience and more a publicity opportunity.

Frank looks up from boxing doughnuts. “That’s true.”

Granny cuts her eyes to him. “Frank, don’t you have boxes to stuff… and a mouth?”

“I’m multitasking.”

The door opens, and Miss Hattie breezes in wearing a lemon yellow blouse, white capris, and the expression of a woman arriving for brunch and gossip rather than a medical appointment.

“Well,” she says, stopping short when she sees Granny. “Look at you.”

“I know,” Granny says modestly. “Recovery agrees with me.”

“We need to go,” I say before the two of them derail the entire morning.

Frank lifts a hand. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

Mr. Humphrey gives one of his usual hmphs behind the newspaper, folded as always to the obituaries, like he’s checking on the competition.

Granny pauses on her way out and points at him. “If you’re going to die while I’m gone, wait until after lunch.”

Mr. Humphrey lowers the paper just enough to glare at her.

Miss Hattie pats his shoulder as she passes. “Don’t pay her any mind, Humph. She’s feeling spry and therefore intolerable.”

“I heard that,” Granny calls.

“You were meant to.”