Chapter 2 - Three Years of Quiet
The drive back to my grandmother's house felt heavier than I expected, her words still looping in my ears like a debt I'd already agreed to pay off.
I carried my one suitcase into the guest room and told myself, over and over, that this was love. Not a transaction. Love.
Rosa was already in the kitchen the first morning, pouring tea into Grandma's favorite cup — the one with the chipped gold rim.
"She doesn't take sugar anymore," Rosa said without turning around. "And she'll ask you three times if the door's locked. Just answer her each time. Don't get short with her."
"Thank you," I said.
Rosa finally looked at me, and something in her face softened, just slightly. "You'll see soon enough. She's not the woman you remember."
She wasn't wrong.
The years folded into routine. Doctor visits every Tuesday. Slow walks through the garden on the days her legs would cooperate. Buttoning her blouse when her fingers shook too badly to manage it herself. I read to her most evenings while she stared out the window at nothing in particular.
"Your hair's too long," she told me once, not turning her head. "And that dress. Where on earth did you find that dress, Hannah?"
"It was on sale, Grandma."
"Hmm."
That was about as close as we came to conversation most nights.
I started noticing the letters. She wrote them by hand at the little desk in her bedroom, and the moment I knocked, she'd slide them into a locked drawer before I even had the door open. She took phone calls too — private ones, her voice dropping the instant she heard my footsteps in the hall.
One evening I stopped outside her door with a tray of soup, and I heard her mid-sentence.
"She must never know," she was saying. "Not yet. Promise me that."
I stepped back. My heart was suddenly loud in my ears.
When I brought the tray in a minute later, she gave me the smallest smile I'd ever seen cross her face.
"Sit with me," she said.
I sat. She didn't say another word for an hour.
At night I'd lie awake asking myself the same question on a loop. Was I here because I loved her, or because she'd promised me everything?
The answer changed depending on the hour.
Some days, when she grabbed my hand through a coughing fit like I was the only solid thing in the room, I knew I'd have stayed with or without the promise. Other days, when she picked apart the way I sliced bread or the way I dressed, I felt my own resentment climb straight up my throat.
"You waste too much," she snapped one afternoon, watching me toss a heel of stale bread. "You never learned the value of a dollar."
"I worked two jobs through college, Grandma. I think I learned it just fine."
She studied me for a long moment, something unreadable behind her eyes.
"We'll see," she said, and turned back to the window.
May you like
On a quiet Sunday in October, my grandmother died in her sleep.
Rosa found her first. I came running down the hallway in my robe and stopped dead in the doorway, my hand pressed against the frame like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
