“She thought he was only sleeping with her,” I tell her.
“Have you gone and gotten tested yet?”
I sit up straight. “Tested for what?” But fear has already settled in my heart.
“For sexually transmitted diseases, dear,” she clarifies.
“Oh, God,” I breathe. “You’re right. I need to go and get tested.”
“As soon as possible,” Gran says quietly.
Tears immediately sting my eyes. The idea that he might have given me something absolutely breaks my heart. “Oh, Gran…”
“It’ll be fine, Abigail,” she replies, her voice calm and soothing like when I used to get a fever and she’d rub my temples. “Go to the doctor, get checked out, and then you won’t have to worry about it ever again.”
“I wonder if there’s a doctor down here.”
“There’s a hospital about twenty miles from there,” she reminds me. “While you’re there, you can see about a job.”
“Why would I look for a job around here?”
“Well, that man isn’t going to follow you home, and the last time I checked, you don’t have a home to come home to. Unless you count here,” she rushes to add. “And you know you’re always welcome here.”
Going home to my grandmother’s as an adult feels like defeat. That’s the last thing I want to do.
“Besides, that young man who hasn’t even kissed you isn’t going to leave Macon Hills, not while his kid is there. Not if he loves him as much as you believe he does.”
“He loves him, Gran.” I smile even though she can’t see me. “You should see him when they’re together. It’s like the sun starts shining all around him.”
“Based on what the Jacobsons have told me, he has some serious feelings of guilt surrounding what happened.”
I stick my finger in my ear and yell loudly, “La la la la. Don’t tell me. I want him to tell me.”
She laughs. “I won’t say a word.” I can picture her zipping her mouth shut. “You like him, huh?” she finally asks, her voice quiet like it’s a whisper, and I can hear the joy in her voice.
“I really like him, Gran.” Which feels weird, because just a couple of weeks ago, I was happily married. “I like him a lot.”
“How gratifying was it when your Ethan ran up to Charles and bumped chests?” Gran asks.
“How did you know that?”
She sniggers. “Apparently, Charles did a reenactment for his mother while he was ranting and raving about you sleeping with some strange man.”
“And what did she tell him?”
“That he’s the cheater, not you.”
I always did like Charles’s mother. She was smart, strong, and she didn’t take a lot of crap.
“I think she’s feeling a little guilty.”
“For what?” I ask, truly astounded at the idea.
“Because she raised a cheating asshole with an inferiority complex.”
I shake my head. “Not sure you can raise a cheater.” Some people just become cheaters, no matter how they were raised. In the South, your upbringing is what determines the trajectory of your life, or so people think. But I have always felt that we, as human beings, are made to build on our upbringing, and we become our most authentic selves while using bits of how we are raised, rather than because of it. We adopt some of the family customs, and we note the ones we can do without and work to eliminate those. It’s not your upbringing that defines you, it’s what you do with it.
“Well, she’s afraid she did raise a cheater, and she’s feeling mighty guilty about it.”