Page 66 of Grumpy

“Jesus,” Maddie muttered under her breath, horrified.

“Still here,” Grumpy reminded her between bites. Despite having lived through it all, it was harder than Grumpy had thought it would be, listening to his injuries listed off like tick marks. He knew Kelly was trying to be respectful, but still, it just reminded him of how far he still had to go to get back to his everyday life.

As if she sensed his discomfort, Kelly squeezed his hand. “I’ll stop there⁠—”

“No,” Grumpy snapped. “Keep going. She needs to know.”

Kelly hesitated, but at least she didn’t ask if he was sure. “The blast ruptured his eardrums. He has residual hearing loss and tinnitus. He’s good in places like this, but get him into a crowd and he’ll have trouble hearing you. And as if all that isn’t enough, he also had a mild TBI. It still wears him down, tiring him easily. Occasionally he struggles with a word or remembering something, but it’s not as often or as frequent as it was when he was in rehab.”

Tears streamed down Maddie’s cheeks to her hands still covering her mouth. “Dad…” Her voice was muffled, but her sorrow wasn’t. “I am so sorry.” Slowly, she lowered her hands. “I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was that bad.” Suddenly, she jerked her head towards the window and the SUV parked on the street outside the diner. If they were here longer than four hours, Jackson would have to go out to pay the meters for both his motorcycle and the SUV. “Wait, you drove here. Was that safe? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he growled, a little harsher than intended. “I’m mending, not broken. It was a long drive, but I was coming either way. As soon as I learned you came to the hospital, I was coming to see you.”

“It took us four days,” Kelly explained. “We took it slow, and one of the club’s ol’ ladies is a doctor. We’ve been in contact with her the whole way. He’s as good as he can be after I threatened to leave him at a gas station if he didn’t pull his head out of his ass.”

Grumpy frowned, finding that detail unnecessary.

Maddie, though, laughed. “Really? Good. I like that you don’t let him push you around. So how did the two of you meet and how long have you been together?”

Bert stopped by to see if they wanted anything else. Maddie ordered a bowl of pickles and cottage cheese, Kelly asked for a chicken salad with pecans, and Grumpy got shrimp and grits.

“Well, our story is…peculiar,” Kelly hedged. “We’ve known each other for ten years. In fact, we met before Grumpy joined the club. I’m a waitress at the diner in town, and he stopped there for a meal that first day. And even though we developed feelings for each other almost right away, the timing just wasn’t right. But we remained friends. Then, out of the blue one day, your dad just walked up to me, kissed me, and told me we were going out on a date.”

Maddie smiled widely. “That sounds like him. And you’ve been together ever since? I remember seeing you at the hospital.”

When Kelly opened her mouth, likely to explain her own manipulation by his mother, Grumpy butted in with a simple, “Yes. And we’re getting married.”

“Oh, that’s great. The two of you seem happy together. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve been holding hands under the table this whole time,” Maddie added with a smirk. Looking directly at Grumpy, she said, “I’m happy for you, Dad.”

They fell quiet again as Bert brought over their meals. From what Grumpy could gather, the man was both waiter and cook. But it wasn’t like the place was booming with business either. Mostly college students picking up to-go meals from what he’d noticed.

As they ate, Kelly filled Maddie in on what they’d learned about Margery and her manipulations in Grumpy’s relationships over the years. How they’d suspected, and Tanya’s letter confirmed, that Margery had had a hand in the proof Tanya had obtained when she’d accused Grumpy of infidelity.

“That bitch,” Maddie murmured around her mixture of pickles and cottage cheese. Grumpy had tried his damnedest not to make a disgusted face when she’d added red pepper flakes from the packet offered on each table and then squirted ketchup and mustard into the bowl before stirring it all together. As if realizing what she’d just said about Grumpy’s mom, her eyes went wide and she looked up at him wearily. “Sorry. But please don’t ask me to forgive her.”

“I’m not,” Grumpy assured her. “I’ve kicked her out of my life. She’s not welcome in it after she pushed you away.”

Maddie pursed her lips for a second. “Are you sure? I thought I was done talking to my mom until I got the news that she’d dropped dead of a brain aneurism. Then it was like I got a flood of all the things I’ll never get to say to her again.”

“I’m sure,” he told her gently, not wanting to upset her at the reminder of her grief. “This is her consequence for manipulating my life and loved ones so heartlessly. I don’t care if she thought she was protecting me from them or them from me, or if she thinks I’ll become my father without her input. The second she purposefully took you from me when she knew how I felt about you, I was done.”

Maddie reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “So what now? How long are you guys here for?”

“Well, that all depends on you,” Grumpy said, not needing to check with Kelly to know she was on the same page as him. “I still have to hear about your life and your plans for your future, as well as my grandchild’s.”

CHAPTER 13

Maddie pushed her cottage cheese concoction around in the off-white bowl. It was extremely surreal, sitting here at Bevo’s with her dad. He looked, well, bad, but pretty good for a guy who got blown up six months ago.

For years, Maddie had hated him. Not for leaving, but for not taking Maddie with him. She understood that the law was not on their side. His abandonment had been so sudden and abrupt that thinking about him positively had been too painful. Did he even remember that they were supposed to go camping with her Girl Scout troop the following weekend? It was a Dad and Daughter trip. He’d put in to have that time off work months before.

And Maddie’s mom had still made her go, even though her ‘dad’ was no longer attending.

She’d been devastated. At only twelve, her mom had hidden so much from her, and by the time Maddie was old enough to understand, she was no longer willing to listen.

Margery’s actions hadn’t just taken Maddie’s dad from her, but her mom too. That day and the way Tanya handled the divorce had driven such a wedge between Maddie and her mom that she hadn’t been able to forgive her until it was too late.

Her mom wasn’t the villain, though. Cowardly, yes, and even impulsive, but not malicious. At least, Maddie hadn’t thought so until her dad had mentioned the restraining order. None of her mom’s letters had said anything about that, but it explained why her dad hadn’t come for her. Biological or not, he was her dad. She believed he would have fought for her if he could.