Hate (27 page)

Not to mention, I couldn’t help but be cynical. Security was on higher alert, but the basic procedures were the same. I’d just been on a plane with someone who had breezed through his attempt at fooling the security system, and I couldn’t help but be skeptical.

The more of a scene she caused, the more unnecessarily preoccupied the TSA would be. And that might allow something, or someone, to slip through the cracks. Because as much as Gram liked to toy with people, she was no terroristic threat.

Well, she was a threat
to
terrorists, but not a threat of being one.

While waiting on the other side of the scanner for the okay, the sound of her giggle put me on red alert. It didn’t take much to hear her, her ability to speak quietly only slightly more advanced than her actual desire to do so.

“Oh yeah, really grab a handful,” she told the flabbergasted female TSA agent in charge of giving her a full body pat down. “Go ahead, really squeeze them,” she taunted, the sparkle of the gleam in her eye shining clear across the room.

Looking Heavenward, I prayed for patience, both that of my own and of the workers forced to have intimate interactions with my personal troublemaker.

The absence of wailing sirens and armed military eased my mind as I was cleared to gather my belongings. I made quick work of it, as always traveling in clothes that were strip-ready and tempting fate by wearing another white shirt.

Gram’s voice continued to carry as they pushed her toward me, “You guys need to lighten up. My breasts are more like deflated balloons than actual breasts anymore. It would have felt like you were patting an empty paper bag.”

Jesus.

“Gram, please, stop giving them a hard time,” I chided her, looking directly into the shell-shocked eyes of the woman pushing her immediately afterward. “I’m so sorry. I’d tell you she’s not normally like this, but she’s
always
freaking like this. They haven’t invented anything to keep her thoughts inside of her head yet.”

“Don’t bother, NeeNee,” she advised, “I’ve been making jokes up and down, and it’s official. These people have no sense of humor.”

I smiled, completely contrite and apologetic, relieving them of her custody and bending down to speak in her ear as I did.

“Maybe they’re trying to actually do their jobs, Gram. There was just a terrorist attack on a flight associated with this very airport.”

“That’s bullshit. It’s possible to be efficient and funny. Those people are neither,” she broadcasted loudly.

“Keep your voice down, you old bat.”

“See? You can multitask. You’re taking care of me
and
being a stick in the mud.”

I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth against feeding into her insanity. “I’ve obviously lost my mind.”

“Me too,” she agreed as though I was actually speaking to her. “Years ago. Just let it wander. It’s much more fun.”

“Not for those around you.”

She shrugged.

Weaving my way through the bustling crowd, I kept my head down and on their feet and refused to engage her for the rest of the trip to the gate.

She bobbed along to some imaginary song in her head, slapping her knee randomly and making the crowd around us flinch with surprise.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I questioned as we passed the last and most convenient one before our gate.

“In that cesspool of bacteria they call a public bathroom? No thanks.”

“Gram, it will be way harder for me to help you on the plane,” I reminded her, trying to coax her into going now like I would a child.

“What’s your point?”

“My point is exactly the point I just pointed out,” I talked in circles, exasperated.

“Say that five times fast.”

“Forget it. I relinquish your right to choose. We’re going to the bathroom now,” I decreed, pushing her into the bathroom.

“That’a girl,” she praised. “Grab me by the balls and make me submit.”

Disgust is the best way to describe the expression of the woman who’d been walking by us at the exact moment that she said that. No doubt she thought I had some sort of BDSM for cross-dressing elderly fetish and was going to tweet about it as soon as she cleared the bathroom door.

“Be glad you don’t have balls right now,” I warned her.

“Why?” she asked turning to look at my face. Taking it in, she asked, “You’d be doing a dance and twist on them like you were snuffing out a cigarette, wouldn’t you?”

The corner of my mouth turned upward. “Something like that.”

“I guess I better shut up then,” she conceded, the wicked twinkle in her eye anything but gone.

She stayed quiet as I helped her into the stall and settled her on the toilet, stepping outside of the stall door to let her take care of herself. She called me back in to help her up, and I did, settling her pants back where they belonged and making sure that there were no wrinkles or bunches that would make it uncomfortable to sit for the next few hours.

Turning back, I flushed the toilet with my foot and then pushed her over to the sinks to wash our hands. They were too high for her to reach in her chair, so I washed mine first and then let her brace herself against me as she took care of hers.

After I settled her back into the chair, checking to make sure she was comfortable, we made our way back out of the bathroom and headed for the gate.

Several silent seconds passed before she murmured quietly, “Thank you, Whitney.”

I squeezed her too thin shoulder, fighting the rush of wetness shining in my eyes. “Anytime, Gram.”

We arrived at the gate just as they started pre-boarding, something that because of Gram’s difficulties we were a part of.

One of the gate attendants came with me down the jetway, helping me to ease Gram out of her chair and leave it at the end of the road for it to be gate checked. After folding the chair she helped me get Gram into her seat in the first row, something I’d strategically planned in order to make the transition in and out of the seat easier. She kept her mouth shut the whole time.

The silence started to creep in, weaving its way into my head and unlocking the all too fresh memories. It’d only been three days since the incident on the flight down. The scab on my neck felt rough under my fingers, and the flight attendant gave me a look as I rubbed at it.

Forcing myself to drop my hand, I intertwined my fingers with each other, working them back and forth in a sort of anxious twisting motion.

The rest of the first class passengers trickled in, and I watched them closely, studying their eyes for malicious intent and their sleeves for hidden wires.

My throat felt tight. I gripped it with my palm, but that only added to the pressure. Panic started to overwhelm me and my breathing cheated me out of air by only dipping shallowly.

At this point I wasn’t sure if I wished Blane were with me or if I was glad he wasn’t. He made me feel safe, but he also would have served as a affirmation of my fears.

More passengers boarded, this time headed for coach, and as I watched them walk past me, I started to wonder if I could really do this. I’d survived the flight to Tampa the day after the attack by sheer force of will. Well, will and alcohol. Truth be told, I’d resorted to drinking heavily in order to numb the nerves, and while ragged by the time we landed, it’d done the trick.

But I couldn’t get drunk now. Gram needed me cognizant and competent. Aware and awake. In a body that wasn’t completely functional, with a mind that didn’t always understand reality, she was counting on me to make sense of confusion and ease her difficulty of movement.

“Heh,” she chortled unexpectedly, pulling me from my mind and putting my attention on her. She was looking at the other passengers as they walked by. “That’s right. Back of the bus, suckers.”

“Gram!”

“What?” she asked innocently. “This is the point of you paying all that extra money for these seats isn’t it? So we can tease the little people?”

“No,” I admonished. “It was so that you would be more comfortable, and the access would be easier.”

“Sure,” she huffed on a laugh. “It didn’t have anything to with you, right? You would have rather been sitting back there with someone’s elbow in your ribs for the entire flight?”

Okay, so not really. “Alright. I’ll admit that I figured it’d be a good advanced reward for the impending doom that is you.”

“Good thinking,” she praised, wiggling in her seat and snapping her fingers at the flight attendant.

I hung my head in shame.

“I’ll take a vodka on the rocks.”

“Water. She’ll take a water,” I corrected.

“Water? Jiminy Cricket. You sure take all the fun out of being an old woman.” At my look, she explained. “I’ve got news for you. I’m not gonna need my liver for much longer, so I might as well work it until it dies.”

If she was drunk, maybe she’d pass out.

Turning back to the flight attendant, I agreed, “She’ll take a vodka.”

BAD NEWS. DRUNK GRAM WASN’T quiet. She was one of those voracious drunks, talking to everyone who made the mistake of even breathing in her direction.

She stuck her nose in their business, accusing several men of having affairs and threatening to tell their wives and telling a crying child that she, and I quote, “better shut [her] fucking trap.”

I needed a nap.

“Good God,” I breathed as I pushed her wheelchair up the ramp of the jetway in Philadelphia, happy to be safely on the ground and on the road to being sequestered from other people. “You’re exhausting.”

Gram looked up and over her shoulder, her brown eyes waiting until my blue eyes met and held them.

“I kept your mind occupied?”

“Yes,” I huffed. “You kept my everything occupied!”

“Good.”

“What?”

“Monsters can only attend the meeting if we leave room for them.”

Enlightenment flooded my synapses.

“You annoyed me so I wouldn’t think about everything?”

“Every once and a while I use my evil in order to help the good.”

I loved the crafty ways of my grandmother.

And I loved that I was so much like her.

But most of all, I just loved her.

THE DOORBELL RANG FOR THE second time as I struggled to get Gram settled back in her wheelchair after helping her go to the restroom.

She looked at me like I was annoying the hell out of her, and I stared right back.

No one said taking care of her was going to be easy, and so far, it really hadn’t been, but she found her moments to remind me of how worthwhile it was.

This wasn’t one of them.

“You know, when people ring that thing they generally want you to answer the damn door.”

“Gee, Gram, really? I thought it was their way of spreading music and cheer.”

She smiled, just barely, and wheeled her way out of the bathroom narrowly missing every single one of my ten toes.

I puffed a breath out of my puckered lips, blowing the wayward hairs out of my face without using my hands.

Knowing things were only going to get more interesting from here—a person at the door, Gram in the house, and dinner on the stove—I washed my hands far more quickly than the recommended twenty seconds, hastily wiped them dry, and took off for the front door at a near run.

“I’m coming!” I shouted, doubting that the person on the other side of the door could hear me, but hoping I was wrong.

Of course, nothing was that easy anymore, and if I was
really
a smart woman, I’d get used to it. Adapt. Accept it for what it was.

When the door came into view, though, I screeched to a halt, practically sliding like a professional baseball player in order to prolong the calm before the storm.

Standing tall in my doorway, looking every inch the sex god he was with aviators, a baby blue t-shirt, and perfectly quaffed hair was none other than the man I’d hit and quit.

Blane Hunt himself.

And perfectly positioned in her rolling chariot in front of him was one of the frankest women on this side of the Mississippi.

Things were about to get interesting.

Especially if she remembered who he was.

“Well, hello there,” I heard her say with a flirtatious lilt.

Ninety. She was
ninety
years old. And it still didn’t stop her.