“Charlie, did you know that Grammie was engaged to someone before she met Grandpa?” I asked my sister, hours later as I sat on the bed in my temporary quarters, tracing the outlines of the roses on the cream-colored comforter.
The silence on the other end of the line gave me all the answer I needed.
“Did I lose you?” I said.
“I’m here,” she replied. “I’m just processing, is all. It’s…a surprise.”
“Isn’t it? I almost choked to death on my soup when Grandpa told me.”
“I guess it kind of makes sense, though. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that happened when Grammie and Grandpa were young that we’ve never heard about. It’s probably just not something they even think anyone wants to know.” She paused. “You know how that generation can be. I don’t mean to generalize, but a lot of older people just aren’t big on information unless you ask them specific questions. It’s part of their past, and they just don’t think it’s anybody’s business.”
“But we’re not just anybody, we’re family. And this is stuff we should know,” I argued.
“I agree with you, Dellie; that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just trying to come up with a reason that we don’t know this already.”
“I wonder if Mama knows. Grandpa said she doesn’t, but maybe she does and she’s kept it a secret,” I said.
“No, I’m pretty sure that if Mama knew, she’d have told us,” Charlie replied. “She would have known that it was something that would interest us. A family factoid that we’d think was important.”
“Grandpa acts like it’s no big deal, like I shouldn’t waste any energy thinking about it. Not really like it’s a secret, just that he’s done with it all. On the upside, I met someone today who might be a little more willing to talk. A lot more willing to talk, actually,” I said, picturing the sprightly little figure of Annabelle MacMillan.
“Oh?” I could tell I had Charlie well and truly hooked.
“Do you remember ever meeting anyone here when we were little named Annabelle MacMillan?” I asked. Even though I didn’t recall the encounter, Annabelle’s reference to me being an itty-bitty thing implied that we’d had at least one meeting, even if it had been years ago. Which also meant that she might have met Charlie. As the oldest, Charlie might remember it.
I could practically hear the name being run through her mental computer.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said after the long pause. “The name doesn’t sound familiar. Why?”
“It seems Annabelle was married to a man named George MacMillan,” I began.
“Okay…?”
“And until he met Annabelle, George MacMillan was engaged to Grammie.”
“What?” she screeched.
“I gather nap time is over?”
“Oh, hush, I wasn’t that loud!” she said, a few decibels lower.
“Maybe not, but still,” I replied, smiling. What I wouldn’t give to see the look on her face right now. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? I’m dying to hear what happened back then.”
“No joke,” Charlie said. “So you think this Annabelle woman will tell you? Where did you meet her, anyway?”
“Grandpa and I were at Town Center, where Coliseum Mall used to be,” I answered. “I was in Victoria’s Secret, picking out some panties, and I ran into her in there.”
“Seriously? In Victoria’s Secret? How old is this woman—she’s gotta be past eighty.” Charlie was clearly appalled.
“And that’s too old for a lingerie store? I’ll remember to remind you of this when we’re in our eighties. I can only hope I’ll be that spry when I’m that age. This lady’s a pistol.”
True, the woman might have stolen my grandmother’s fiancé right out from under her, but I couldn’t help being slightly in awe of her.
“Okay, okay,” Charlie muttered, backpedaling a bit. “So it’s not too old, I guess. But you have to admit, that really is a random spot for meeting the woman who torpedoed Grammie’s engagement.”
“Granted,” I replied. “And it seems the man in question is no longer with us, but Miz Annabelle still likes to rock to racy britches.” I giggled.
“That’s too much,” Charlie said, on her own fit of giggles. “So you think she’ll tell you?”
“Actually, I don’t think it’ll take much persuading,” I said with a confidence I felt down to my toes.
“Good,” she said, suddenly sounding a bit sad. “I wish I could be there to hear it all.”
The devilish grin on my face was wiped away by the melancholy that I felt creeping in.
“Me, too, Charlie. I wish you were here.”
“Promise to tell me everything?”
“Every last little bit,” I swore.
Annabelle’s Facebook page was quite the flurry of activity. I’m always amazed at just how much time people can spend on social media—Check out what I had for breakfast… I’m trying this shade of lipstick… My dog did the cutest thing…
All very fascinating and clearly relevant to the world at large—so much more so to their waiting public and adoring fans.
Still, it did come in handy when you were trying to get a bead on someone’s personality and social habits. Kind of like observing monkeys in the wild, sometimes.
Fortunately, Annabelle’s page wasn’t overrun with selfies of her holding breakfast bowl aloft or pouting at the camera, but she did keep the feed going. And apparently, she was giving ABC a good tongue-lashing for something that had happened today on Good Morning America. Many comments and “Likes” ensued.
The number of friends she had was staggering—although, as old as she was, it certainly wasn’t unlikely that she truly knew most of them. Especially since most of these friends were her contemporaries. Further adding to my list of revelations was the sheer volume of the senior set who seemed to be keeping social media busier than a Catholic confessional after Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter.
Annabelle was quite the social butterfly, if the photos on her page were anything to go by. She was on four different committees at her church, a proud member of the Junior League—surprise, surprise—on the board of trustees for both the Hampton Historical and Genealogical Societies, and a lifetime supporter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Upcoming events she was inviting everyone to included a church bazaar to raise funds for the local women’s shelter and the youth group’s mission trip to Haiti.
I gawked at my computer screen.
All this, at her age?
I scratched my head, wondering how on Earth she managed such a taxing schedule. I was tired just looking at it.
Her Twitter feed was just as frenzied, boasting 1,945 followers. My eyes bulged at the number.
The woman was truly impressive.
Tiny, but very, very impressive.
Obviously, that iPhone of hers was on fire; it seemed as though she was tweeting about something or other every hour, on the hour, uploading pics and posting comments at a rate that would rival even the most Twitter-obsessed tween. Still, she somehow managed not to be annoying. In fact, most of what she posted was really interesting. Some of it was even helpful, like tips on how to get strawberry preserve stains out of tweed and quick fixes for a headache, all boiled down into 140 characters or less.
Simply amazing.
I hesitated a moment before I picked up my cell, the age and outdated-ness of it glaringly obvious as I remembered Annabelle’s sparkly piece of Apple’s latest ingenuity.
I was going to do this. I was seriously going to do this, I resolved. It was the only way to get the details on what had happened all those years ago. True, Grammie had countless friends and a handful of family members who had probably been around then, but I really wasn’t comfortable putting any of them in that position of being the one to spill the story. Especially if this ended up being something that Grammie and Grandpa had asked them not to talk about.
Like, ever. And especially not to any of us.
I tapped the icon next to her contact info and held my breath as the line began to ring.
It seemed like an eternity before she answered.
“Hello?” Her voice on the phone was just as vibrant as her personality.
“Hi, Annabelle, it’s Dellie. Merry Samuelson’s granddaughter?”
“Wonderful to hear from you, Dellie! I was hoping you’d call!” There wasn’t even the barest hint of insincerity in her words.
“Oh, good. So I’m not bothering you, then?” I asked.
“Hardly. When you get to be my age, a phone call is a lovely thing. Most of the time, anyway,” she allowed.
With the social calendar she was maintaining, I had a teeny-tiny bit of trouble imagining that she was hard up for phone calls, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue the point.
“Well,” I began, feeling unsure of myself and hoping that it wasn’t obvious by the tone of my voice. “I was calling to see if you’d like to have coffee sometime this week, if you’re not too busy.”
“I would love that, my dear!” she answered without hesitation.
I hadn’t anticipated such an enthusiastic response, and I was even thinking she might tell me she’d have to consult her schedule and get back to me.
“Would tomorrow work for you?” she asked.
“Tomorrow?” I repeated, trying to recall if Grandpa had mentioned any plans for tomorrow. “I think tomorrow would be okay,” I said after a slight delay, having come up with no reason not to.
And then I remembered my lack of transportation. Grandpa’s very logical solution had been simply that he could drive me anywhere I wanted to go. Now that he was technically retired, he made his own schedule for his whatever construction projects going on and was more than willing to play chauffeur, but I still wasn’t so sure that was the best option. Probably it would behoove me to bite the bullet and look into a car rental. One of my uncles lived only a few minutes away, but I doubted that he had a spare set of wheels to lend me. And while I could ask the neighbor across the street, who had lived there as long as my grandparents had been in this house, if I could borrow one of her grandchildren’s bikes, that would only do for relatively short distances.
Ouch. Renting a car for a whole month was bound to be expensive, but at the moment, I didn’t see any way around it. I decided to push the thought to the back of my mind and come back to it later.
“I don’t have a car, Annabelle, so I’ll have to see if Grandpa can drop me off,” I trailed off, feeling like an idiot for not having thought of this part of the plan to meet with her. How had I been so shortsighted?
“Oh, pish,” she said, “no need to bother your grandfather with that. I can come on by and pick you up; don’t you worry.”
My eyes narrowed, and I felt my stomach tighten. The woman was itty-bitty and pushing ninety years old… How did she manage to even see over the steering wheel? Did she sit on phone books? And really, how was her vision? Suddenly, the idea of borrowing a bicycle seemed much more appealing that it had initially.
Annabelle must have sensed my hesitation, because her next words seemed like an attempt to offer reassurance. “I may be old, child, but my eye doctor says I have better eyesight than a hawk, and my driving record is cleaner than a surgeon’s hands,” her raspy voice insisted.
I blinked, letting the information sink in. Not even mine was that good, and she was almost three times my age. That was a really, really long time to maintain such a pristine driving record. And comparing our eyesight? Last time I’d been to the ophthalmologist, he’d shaken his head in sympathetic wonderment at my spectacular optical deficiencies.
I kept silent, knowing I didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to questioning her ability to drive a car. Out of the two of us, she definitely had more going for her than I did.
“I’m an early riser, so does morning work for you?” Annabelle asked, breaking into my erratic thoughts.
“Um, that should be fine?” I knew the upswing at the end made it a question rather than an affirmative statement, but I was still feeling a bit apprehensive at the thought of it all. Much as I wanted to be able to pick Annabelle’s brain about the whole George-Merry-Annabelle love triangle, something about the whole thing was making me nervous.
“Lovely,” she said. “I’ll come by to pick you up at nine, then,” Annabelle chirped, sounding excited.
“Do you need the address?” I asked, hoping that Grandpa wouldn’t care that I was making plans with Annabelle. I really didn’t want to have to explain all of this to him. He seemed not to understand my interest in knowing more about it, and I wasn’t so sure I would be able to communicate my need to know more in a way that made any sense. Charlie seemed to understand, in her way; she was looking at things through the desire to hear more about the family she was part of, to know more about who our grandmother had been as a young woman. I wanted to know for that reason, as well. But even more than that, I wanted to hear the story of how she had worked through the loss of one love to find a new one. I wanted to hear the story of how she had built a life that made her happy and whole, and this was part of that story.
“No, no,” Annabelle confirmed. “Lord knows I’ve been there enough times to pick up all those cakes I’ve ordered over the years!” She laughed.
I felt a smile creep across my face, picturing Grammie’s dining room table laden with sheet cakes in various stages of completion—some having just received a crumb layer of frosting, while others were fully decorated and waiting to be picked up. Grammie had never had an official business—it had always been more of a word-of-mouth operation, but it had certainly been effective. One bite of Grammie’s cake was all it took for those mouths to become chattier than the Fox News Twitter feed, and this had all begun decades before social media employed technology.
“My, but she did make some wonderful cakes,” Annabelle murmured, her voice softening at the memory.
I pulled my attention back to the plans we were making.
“She did,” I agreed, feeling a twist in my gut at having to use the past tense whenever I referred to her. “So, nine tomorrow morning, then?” I repeated, just to confirm that I hadn’t missed anything while I was off in the La-La Land of my memories.
“Yes, dear. See you then!”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed, wondering what new information she might have to impart.
I clicked off from the call, then pulled up the list I had created and stored on my phone, my bucket list of things that would help me reclaim my life. So far, I’d really only addressed three of the items on my list, and even those weren’t fully executed. I’d bought two pairs of panties, taken a trip, and left Florida to come to Virginia—which was certainly a start on getting out of my routine. But there was more. I needed to make getting out of my routine bigger than simply taking time out to go to Virginia, only to go home and pick right back up where I had left off—living under the shadow of anxieties that were unhealthy both for my mind and for my body, not really living so much as I was simply existing. There was more, and I wanted to learn how to claim it. Maybe hearing Grammie’s story would teach me something, I thought as I scrolled through the list. Maybe it would help me heal.