Chapter 5
At four in the afternoon, I reached my grandmother's little yard.
She was cleaning vegetables outside. When she saw me come back alone with a suitcase, she stopped, put down her basket, and hurried over.
She asked, "Renee? Why are you here at this hour? Where's Ryan?"
She took my hand, and her palm was warm and a little damp.
"He's behind me. He'll be here soon." I made myself smile.
Half an hour later, a car engine came up to the gate.
Ryan pushed the gate open, and the person who got out behind him was Chloe, in a designer dress and stiletto heels.
Chloe carried a few gift boxes, and her smile was turned all the way up.
"Hello, ma'am. I'm Ryan's friend, Chloe. He said he was coming out to see you today, so I came along to share in the happy news."
My grandmother's face closed at once.
She had lived a long time, and she could read a person in a second.
She looked at Chloe in her labels, taking over the yard, then at Ryan standing off to the side looking uncomfortable, and finally at me.
"Ryan," she said, steady and with weight behind it, "tonight this family is feeding the man who's about to marry our girl. Do you think bringing a friend is appropriate?"
Ryan stalled, then explained fast. "Grandma, Chloe just got back and doesn't know anyone in the city. She heard the country out here is beautiful and insisted on coming.
"Renee and I are getting married in two days, and Chloe is like a little sister to us."
"A little sister?" My grandmother laughed coldly. "Renee is an only child. Where did a sister come from?"
Chloe's eyes went red at once, and she tugged at Ryan's sleeve.
She said, "Ryan, did I say the wrong thing? If Grandma doesn't like me, I'll leave right now."
It went straight through Ryan. He took Chloe's hand and turned a look on me.
"Renee, why aren't you saying anything for Chloe? Grandma is old and doesn't know better. Do you not know better either?"
My grandmother was old and didn't know better.
Hearing it landed on my chest like a hammer.
My grandmother pulled me behind her and banged her cane on the ground.
"Ryan Carter, is that how you talk to Renee? You stand in my yard carrying on with another woman and blame my granddaughter. Have you got any manners left at all?"
The yard went to ice.
Ryan's face went dark. He knew he was in the wrong, and he dropped his voice. "Grandma, that isn't what I meant."
My grandmother made a sound, took my arm, and walked me inside.
Dinner was the strangest meal I have ever sat through.
Chloe ran the table. She sat beside Ryan, kept putting food on his plate, peeled his shrimp, picked up his soup bowl, and drank from it as if it were hers.
Ryan didn't stop her once. He looked after her through the whole meal.
When a bit of sauce caught on her lip, he pulled a napkin and wiped it off for her without thinking about it.
They looked like a couple two months into it.
I sat across from them like a guest nobody had invited.
My grandmother watched all of it without a word, and the disappointment in her face got deeper.
After dinner, by the local custom, the bride and groom aren't supposed to see each other the night before the wedding.
My uncle told Ryan, "Ryan, by the custom, Renee stays at the hotel in town tonight.
"Take this young lady back to the city, and at eight tomorrow morning bring the convoy to the Crown Grand Hotel, suite 308, to collect her."
Ryan nodded fast. "Of course. I've got it."
Before Ryan left, my grandmother called me into the back room.
She took a heavy metal box out of a cabinet and pressed it into my hands.
Inside was a stack of savings bonds and a set of old gold jewelry.
"Renee." She held my hand, and the tears came. "This is what your mother set aside for you. I've kept it all these years.
"I'm not blind. Ryan's heart isn't with you anymore."
I looked at her white hair and couldn't hold the tears back any longer.
I cried, "Grandma."
"Silly girl." She wiped my face, firm and aching at the same time. "A marriage is the rest of your life. If it costs you this much, we don't do it.
"You have two hands and two feet, and you can make a good life without any man. Listen to me and stop swallowing this."
I put my face into her shoulder and cried like a child who had lost the world.
Everything I had swallowed came out of me at once.
And I knew I had made the right decision.