AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This is your home, girls,” Gran had told us. “And it will always be here for you if you ever need to come back.”
We’d sipped lemonade on the back porch with our father’s mother—the sharp and almost scary old woman we’d previously had only monthly dinners and holidays with.
“It might not feel like home right now, but I hope one day it will. And when you need it, when you need a place to remember who you are, or decide who you want to be, this will be the place to do it.” She’d said this like it was a fact, and I wasn’t sure if she was right or if she’d just planted that belief deep inside me somewhere that day. But I knew I’d needed to come home. To figure everything out.
I didn’t stay in my room long, and while the house was quiet and Jace was outside, I went downstairs to talk to Gran.
"Gran?" I asked, stepping into the little room Tess had set up, where Gran's enormous computer was blazing away, and she was seated in front of it like some kind of deranged mission control captain.
She swiveled, eyeing me suspiciously, her huge headphones clamped onto her head. "Do I know you?" She squinted at me.
Oh god, was Gran losing it? Tess hadn't said anything to me about dementia.
"It's me, Juliet. Your granddaughter?"
She pushed her thin lips together and looked up, laying a finger across her mouth like she was trying to remember. "Now let me see," she said. "I have one granddaughter, Tessy. She baked me a birthday cake and plays cards with me sometimes. Makes a mean Manhattan, too. But I'm having a hard time placing you. You look kind of familiar."
"Gran." I crossed my arms. She was just being difficult.
"Aren't you that movie star?"
"Gran." I was beginning to become exasperated. I flopped down into the chair facing her. I didn’t need this right now. I needed real advice, but if I had to suffer through some Gran antics first, I would. We still had a few hours before I needed to get ready for the party.
"Oh wait," she went on, still tormenting me. "That frown. I remember that. There was a little blond girl who lived here once. Pretty little thing. But boy, could she throw a temper tantrum when she didn't get what she wanted."
Since I'd been ten when I'd come to live with Gran, those tantrums had been pretty ugly. I remembered them too. "Yes, sorry about those."
"So it is you." She pulled off the big headset and pushed a few buttons on her keyboard.
"It might be," I said, relaxing a little now that it seemed like Gran might actually be willing to talk to me like an adult. "I don't know quite who I am sometimes."
"America's Geekheart?"
I shook my head. "That's the Pippa Grant book you sent me to try to get made into a film. You might be looking for that stupid name they call me: America's Sweetheart, but I'm not that either."
"Excellent book," she said tilting her head to one side, obviously thinking about the book again.
“Yes, but not the point."
Gran sighed, as if maybe having heart-to-heart talks was something she wasn't up to at the moment. I started to get to my feet. "I should let you get ready for your party, I guess."
"Sit your ass back down, Juliet, we’ve got five hours before the damned party. I've been wanting to talk to you since you got here, but you've been so busy chasing your pet gorillas around and moaning, I haven't had a chance."
Gorillas? Moaning? I sounded delightful. And completely transparent. "Sorry."
"What's going on?" She reached into the pocket of her track suit and extracted a joint, then scrabbled behind her on the desk for a lighter.
I didn't even tell her not to. What was the point? Gran did what Gran wanted. Instead I told her about Zac. About finding him sampling our chef's private offerings, about the blackmail and the refusal of every settlement offer I'd put forth. I told her about the sex tape, and then I told her about Jace, and finally about Chad's threat.
"Sweetheart, I love you, but you're an asshole magnet."
"Not at all helpful." Which didn't make her wrong. I slumped to one side and dropped my chin into my palm. I thought maybe I was finally getting away from assholes—Jace definitely wasn’t one. But things with Jace weren’t going perfectly either. "Don't you have some words of wisdom, Gran? Like when you told me in high school that the best way to get to be the girl at the top of the pyramid was to keep dropping everyone else when they made me be on the bottom in cheer?"
"Did that girl's arm ever heal?" Gran grinned at me.
"I'm sure it did. It was just a little fracture."
"She deserved it. That girl put her lip gloss on so thick I bet she's still trying to scrape off the remnants."
