from there.”
“Okay.” She took a breath. Her hands trembled. She didn’t move.
“Your grandmother’s quite popular around here. This will make her day.”
Might’ve helped if she had known her grandmother. She didn’t, but Dani took another deep breath and headed forward. As she got off on the second floor, a lady wearing a nametag that said Phyllis smiled at her.
“I’m Dani O’Hara.”
“Who are you here for?”
“My grandmother. Sandra O’Hara.”
Phyllis nodded and stood up. “Follow me. I’ll take you to her.”
“Um…is she…” Dani glanced at the other woman who was still humming. Her eyes followed Dani’s as she walked behind Phyllis, in the opposite direction.
“No.” Phyllis laughed. “Sandy’s nothing like that one. That one’s near her catatonic stage. She just sits and hums. And watches. She sits, hums, and watches. That’s about it. Sandy’s, well, you’ll see for yourself.”
They stopped at a closed door and Phyllis knocked twice. She opened it. “Sandy? You got a visitor.”
Dani heard something fall inside the room and frowned. There was a quick shuffling on the floor and Phyllis stepped back. The door opened and Dani looked up.
Sandra O’Hara had the wrinkles that artist’s love to capture. She had long white hair that had been messily pulled back into a braid. And her eyes were an almond color. Dani realized with a jolt—her grandmomma had her eyes.
Sandra O’Hara didn’t say a word. She raked Dani up and down as Dani took in her own image. She was short, like Erica. She had goosebumps up and down her bare arms. Dressed in hospital scrubs, the green coloring made her white hair seem whiter.
“Who are you?”
Dani saw the intelligence then. She took a deep breath. “I’m your granddaughter.”
“Which one?”
Dani instinctually stepped back. “I’m Dani O’Hara. Danielle was my mother. She—”
“My daughter’s dead. I know that much.” Sandy gestured to Phyllis. “I’ll visit with my granddaughter in the reading room. Can you get Lawrence out of there?”
Phyllis smiled and patted Sandy on the arm. “Of course, Sandy. Of course.”
As she left, Dani studied her grandmomma’s room. She couldn’t handle her intense scrutiny of her face, so she looked anywhere else.
“How’d you know I was here?”
Dani narrowed her eyes at the question and saw the suspicion. “Thought you were crazy.”
Sandra barked out a laugh and shook her head, “Oh—I’m crazy. Crazy, senile, and old. But you’re my granddaughter, all right. Spitting image of your momma.” She turned and sat in a chair. “Let’s hope you ain’t nothing like your momma.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because she had awful taste in men, that’s what. She died, leaving you youngin’s alone. And because she wasn’t all right in the head, either. A little cuckoo…and that’s coming from a crazy lady.” Sandra gave a hoarse laugh as she leaned back in her chair. “So. What are you doing here?”
“I found about you from Mrs. Bendsfield. I never knew you were even alive.”
Phyllis knocked on the door. “The reading room is open, Sandy. I told the kitchen where you’ll be and I ordered an extra tray.”
Sandy heaved a deep breath and stood up. She waved impatiently for Dani to move closer and clasped her arm. “You can help walk me there. Make sure I don’t go face first and break a hip.”
“You don’t seem irrational.”
Sandy snorted and patted her granddaughter’s arm. “I am, girly. I am. You just seeing me on a good day. Trust me, these days don’t come by so often. Believe it or not, I’m needed behind these white-ass walls.”
“You talk like Mae.”
The smile vanished from Sandy’s face. “Yeah. Guess I do.”
The reading room was a small library with two coral plush couches on one side. Three bookcases framed the walls with a narrow window above them. In one corner, a light-stained wooden desk stood bare with two moss-green lounging chairs placed before them. The upholstery’s stitches were coming apart at the seams, but Sandy didn’t mind as she dropped down on one of the chairs. She patted the second and said briskly, “Sit.”
“The couches look more comfortable.”
Sandy shook her head with a grimace on her face. “I can’t get up when I sit on those anymore. I’d rather be able to stand than look like a fool when I break a hip.”
Dani contemplated her grandmother, searching for any resemblance she could find. She murmured as she crossed her legs, “You talk like Mae. I have your eyes. And you’re short like Erica.”
“Erica?”
“My little sister.”
Sandy nodded. “She’s the one that died, right? Philly read me the obituary. She was young, wasn’t she?”
“She had just turned twenty-two.”
Sandy sucked in her breath and shook her head. She clasped her seemingly frail hands together where the wrinkles ran together. “I got two daughters who don’t speak to me. The one who did is in the ground. And I used to have three granddaughters who didn’t know I existed. One of them’s already dead.”
“Why don’t they talk to you? Kathryn never talked about you. Neither did Mae.”
Sandy studied Dani for a moment. Her eyes seemed to pierce straight through Dani, but Dani held strong. She felt like her grandmother was trying to read into her soul, figure something out.
“Let me guess…,” Sandy mused, her ruby-red lips pursed, “You’re closest to Mae, huh?”
Dani was looking for the craziness. She was looking for why her grandmother was locked up and never spoken of, but the elder that sat before was sane, logical, and a little too intelligent.
“How’d you know?”
“Because I know my daughters. And I know how they don’t enjoy each other. You talk to Mae, that means you don’t talk to Kathryn.”
“I thought my mother got along with Kathryn.” They always had. She could remember Sundays spent together. Holidays. Birthday parties.
“Nuh huh.” Sandy leaned forward and grabbed a pencil awkwardly. Her hands shook, but she managed to keep a hold on it. As she started to twirl it in her hands, she spoke, “Kathryn, Danny, and Mae hated each other. No, that’s not right. Mae loved Danny, but Danny knew who she could be around and who she couldn’t. Your aunt Mae was wild back in her day. Too wild, but she never listened to me. Hated me, she did.”
“But Aunt Kathryn and Momma…”
“Nope!” she exclaimed as she threw the pencil in the air and caught it. She repeated the gesture as she said, “Kathy and Danny had two things in common. Presentation. And their taste in men.”
Dani watched the pencil wearily. She saw her grandmother nearly drop it, but she always caught it in the end.
“Their taste in men was awful,” Sandy said disgustedly, the loose skin under her chin was wiggling as she kept throwing and catching the pencil. Each time a smirk of satisfaction would light upon her features.
This was a stranger who had read her family’s biography.
Dani sat back, a small frown marred her face. She tucked her hands underneath one leg as she crossed them.
Her grandmomma stopped abruptly and stared at her.
“What?” Dani took a breath. She felt her grandmomma was reading her soul.
“You just want to get right into it, don’t you?” Sandy chuckled and shook her head. She threw the pencil again. “Don’t work like that. Life’s not always going to hand you the platter you want.”
Dani snorted and remarked, without thought, “Got a crazy grandmomma for one, so no—life’s not going to hand me the platter I want. I never expected that.”
She nodded to Dani. “I see how you been raised. You been raised like Mae. You look like your momma, but you handle like Mae. Not much Kathryn in you.”
“Why didn’t I know about you?”
Her grandmomma snorted
. “That—you going have to come for a second visit for that.”
“We’re not negotiating.”
“Oh yeah, we are.”
“I want to know why you were kept a secret.”
“And I’d like to know why your momma stopped coming to visit. I’d like to know what my granddaughters were like. I’d like to know how my daughters are doing, if they’re happy or miserable. I’d even like to know if they’re living on the streets. There’s a whole hell of a lot more that I’d like to know than you, I guarantee that.”
“You’re supposedly crazy. Maybe you do know, you just don’t remember it.”
Sandy barked out a raspy laugh. She slapped her knee and shook her head.
“This ain’t no delusion, honey.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“You been drinking?”
“What?”
“I know what Mae was like. A drunk and whore. You got a little of that in you?” She didn’t sound accusatory, just curious.
Dani flushed, thinking it was ironic. She rarely drank, but got drunk the previous night. And she rarely had sex, but had it that morning.
“No,” her grandmomma answered her own question. “A drunk and whore wouldn’t blush like that. You ain’t no drunk and whore. Tell me,” she leaned forward. “Mae still like that?”
What kind of family did she come from? Her senile, instituted, grandmother let the words easily roll off her tongue. Kathryn would’ve fainted at the nerve. Dani had a hard time understanding that her aunt Kathryn had lived with this woman…as a mother.
“No.”
“So what she doing nowadays?”
“She owns a bar. It’s popular.”
“What’s the name of it?” Her grandmomma had hawk eyes. They followed every twitch, every swallow like a mouse two miles away.
“Mae’s Grill.”
“Are you serious?”
Dani was startled by the sudden smile that spread over her face. All the wrinkles were pushed back and her face distorted into a happy human being. “Yes.”
“Oh damn.” She tipped her head back and laughed. “All the workers talk about that place. They love it. Once a week they all put in orders and James drives down and gets them. Her food is good. Damn good. Just like my own momma’s cooking. How is Mae?”
“She’s really good. She owns that house next door to the grill and she’s letting me stay at her lake cabin. She’s happy and…sober.”
“Still got the men, I bet,” Sandy harrumphed, but there was no condescension behind it. “Tell me about Erica. I want to know about the one that died.”
“I don’t really know who Erica was when she died.”
“Why not? You’re her sister.”
“You don’t know how your own damn daughters are!”
“No.” A breath. “No, I sure don’t and I’ll tell you next visit why I don’t know them. I want to know why you don’t know your sister now. This visit.”
“Because I left town and didn’t talk to anyone. Erica was spoiled, a brat, and obnoxious when I left. When I came back…”
“Let me guess.” Sandy didn’t miss a thing. “She changed?”
“Yeah.”
“Death does that, girl. Losing a loved one does that too.”
“Erica hadn’t really lost anyone—”
“I’m talking about you. You said you left and didn’t talk to anyone. She lost you.” The food was brought in then. Sandy started her pudding and then grabbed the ham sandwich. “This is good food. You don’t want to eat?”
Dani shook her head.
“I’m the crazy one?” Sandy laughed to herself. “This food is good. You’re crazy for not eating, but to each her own.”
“I thought you’d be strapped to a bed, drooling at the mouth.” Dani shook her head. “You’re—why are you in here?”
Sandy’s white hair flew around her as she finished her milk. She shook the carton to make sure every last drop fell into her aged mouth. “Because I get real sad. Sometimes I get real angry and other times I’m violent. I used to hurt myself on a regular basis. I had someone always watching me. They’d sit on a chair and stare at me for all hours of the day.” She put the milk down and frowned. “They changed my meds a few months ago and I’m a little better. I’m real good today, got a visitor to boot.” She patted Dani’s knee with a shaking hand. “This is a good day, that’s all it is.”
“You weren’t a fit mother.” She remembered Mae talking about their fights. She couldn’t have been—she had three daughters who didn’t speak of her.
“I wasn’t. I’m not going to say there are two sides to the story because I should’ve been my little girls’ momma. I wasn’t. I know, now, that some it’s from my own momma and her momma before that. You got a different momma and judging from the looks of you, whatever my little Danny did—it was right by you.”
“Who is my father?”
Sandy shook her head and stood. She shuffled to the door and yelled out, “We’re done in here. Lawrence, you can have my granddaughter’s food. She didn’t eat a bit.”
Lawrence was inside in a flash. Dani thought it wasn’t for the food, but for the room. He grabbed her sandwich and pudding and escaped to the farthest corner.
“That’s your third visit,” Sandy informed her granddaughter. She held out her arm and Dani sighed. She stood and grasped the arm and walked alongside her grandmomma. As they walked past the humming lady, Sandy stuck her tongue out. Dani was shocked to see the lady harrumphed as she stuck her own tongue out.
Sandy chuckled to herself. “She’s a feisty one. She always tries to take my cigarettes. Got the damn staff fooled, thinking all she does is hum. She don’t sit and not think. She’s a feisty one. Smart too.”
At Sandy’s room, Dani held back in the doorway.
“Next visit, I’ll tell you why you never knew about me.”
Dani waited.
“And the visit after that—I’ll tell you who your daddy is.” She sat down and rearranged a blanket over her legs.
“You could always ask Kathy. She knows who your daddy is.”
“She doesn’t like me much.”
“That’s not surprising. You look like your momma. She didn’t like your momma either.”
As Dani left, walking through the hallways and out the front lobby, she felt more confused than when she’d arrived. Not normal. That’s what Dani had thought she was, but maybe she wasn’t.
Dani went for a run that afternoon. When she got back to the cabin, she saw Jake’s cruiser outside the cabin. He was waiting by her door, wearing a frown, and Dani motioned for him to head inside. She showered first, preparing herself for what this visit was about. As she came back out, he was at the kitchen table. She didn’t beat around the bush. “What’s going on, Jake? You and me don’t do visits.”
“What’s going on between you and Bannon?”
“Since I’ve become friends with both, you need to be more specific.”
“You piss me off, Dani.” Jake shook his head and growled, “Jonah Bannon. And you. What’s going on?”
“Why is it your business?”
He stared at her, studying her. Dani was used to it and especially with him. She knew Jake better than anyone. Something was brewing underneath his surface and she wanted to know.
“Bannon’s gotten mixed up in some business that could go dirty. I don’t want you hurt in the crossfire.”
“What kind of business?”