I DIDN’T KNOW what to expect this grandmother to be like. It was weird to think she was Curtis’s mother. Actually, it was weird to think Curtis even had a mother. Curtis and my mom had been together for over six years, but he hadn’t lived with us all the time, and he was away a lot, doing different jobs here and there—tree planting up north or working on fishing boats for months at a time. In some ways, I didn’t feel like I knew him all that well. He’d never wanted me to call him Dad or anything like that. Not that I wanted to, exactly, but it was weird being the only one who didn’t.
Violet had said Grandma when she was on the phone, and I wondered if the twins would call her that too, and what I should call her. Diane? Mrs. Brooks?
Maybe I’d just avoid calling her anything.
We stood in front of the Walmart, waiting. Violet bit her nails. “I hope she’s not too mad,” she said.
“Why would she be mad?” Saffron asked.
“She won’t be,” I said, glaring at Violet over Saffy’s head. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
Saffron put her hands on her hips. “Then why did Violet say she’d be mad?”
I could see Whisper listening carefully to every word. The last thing we needed was for her to be in full meltdown mode when her grandmother drove up. Time for a distraction. “Hey,” I said loudly, “let’s all guess what color her car will be. I say white…”
Ty caught on. “Black.”
“Pink,” Saffron decided.
“How about you, Whisper? Blue? Green?” I paused. “Brown?”
“Red,” Whisper said.
It was so quiet—and so unexpected—that I almost missed it. I swallowed and tried to stay calm. I didn’t want to freak her out or make a huge deal of it. “Red, huh? You’re guessing red? Okay.”
Saffron didn’t seem to notice anything unusual, but Violet was staring at Whisper like she had suddenly grown a second head or something. I shook my head at her warningly. “How about you, Vi? What color is her car going to be?”
“Um, right. Blue. Did someone already say blue?”
“Nope. Okay, so…” I broke off. “Is that her?”
A dark-red suv was slowing down and pulling over to the curb in front of us. I squinted but couldn’t really see through the tinted windows.
Violet blew out a long breath. “Red,” she said. “You win, Whisper.”
Whisper grinned.
“Pink would look much nicer,” Saffron said.
We all stared as the driver got out and walked around the front of the car. “Violet?” she said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”
I wouldn’t have recognized her either, not from the grandmother image in my head. She looked more like a Diane Brooks than a grandmother. She didn’t seem very old, for one thing. Her brown hair was glossy and kind of stylish, with frosty-blond highlights, and she was wearing a purple skirt with a black jacket. She had lots of bracelets on both arms, and they jangled when she moved her hands.
“Hi,” Violet said. I’d never heard her sound so shy before. “Um, this is Ty. My boyfriend. And—”
“And Saffron and Juniper.” She turned to the twins. “Well, you’ve certainly grown.”
She said it kind of disapprovingly, like she’d rather they hadn’t. I exchanged looks with Violet.
“Yes?” Saffron said, her voice rising as if it was a question. Whisper looked down at the ground.
“Thanks for coming to pick us up, Mrs. Brooks,” I said. “Um, I’m Wolf.”
“Of course. You wouldn’t remember me, but I did meet you a few times on Lasqueti Island, when Curtis started spending time with Jade. Your mother. Before I left.” She looked me up and down with that same critical frown. “You used to be a tiny little thing.”
I nodded politely. “Violet told me you lived there for a while.”
“A year, yes. But I’ve been here in Nelson for a long time. I’m in real estate now.” She turned back to Violet. “What are you all doing here? I had no idea you were coming. I haven’t spoken to Curtis for a couple of years. Not since that time he came out here when the twins were toddlers.”
Violet stuck out her lower lip and blew a long noisy breath that lifted her bangs off her forehead. “It’s a super-long story.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Brooks gave her a skeptical look and then gestured to the car. “Well, get in. You can tell me about it on the way.”
Violet did most of the talking. She started with my bee project, explaining how I’d done all this research on why bees were dying and all that stuff. She didn’t make it sound like the trip was all my fault this time. She explained how Jade had latched on to the subject and started her own website about it, and how things had kind of spiraled from there—the trip and George the van and leaving school early and Ty not being allowed to come.
Mrs. Brooks interrupted her a couple of times to clarify some point, but mostly she just drove and listened, even though Violet didn’t seem to be getting anywhere close to explaining why we had all appeared, without warning and without our parents, at the Walmart in Nelson.
Violet had just gotten to the part where we did our first presentation in Vancouver when Mrs. Brooks held up a hand to indicate she should stop. “This is my place,” she said, pulling into the driveway beside a meticulously landscaped front yard. “So Violet, just pause the story there and let’s get you all settled in with a drink and something to eat—I bet you haven’t had dinner, have you? And then you can tell me the rest.”
Violet nodded, looking relieved. I wondered if she’d been planning to leave out the part where she took off with Ty. It wasn’t really relevant, but so far she’d included every last detail, right down to which exams she was missing and the specific design of the twins’ costumes. As we got out of the car, she grabbed my shoulder. “Do you think it’s going well?” she whispered.
“It’s hard to tell. Did you know she hadn’t talked to Curtis in years?”
“Sort of. I knew they had a big fight and that was why she left Lasqueti. And I knew it didn’t go well when he visited with the twins. I think he was hoping to fix things, but it didn’t work out.” She made a face. “I can’t stop babbling—I’m so nervous.”
I leaned close, my mouth inches from her ear. “You’re going to tell her about Whisper, right? About her not talking and everything?”
“Of course. That’s mostly why we’re here, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. But don’t explain that part in front of the twins.”
She pulled back and gave me a scornful look. “Give me some credit. I’m not a complete idiot, Wolf.”