29
Evie
The funeral is a somber affair. Grady stands next to me at the church, his shoulder hitched in the doorway as he waits with me for the room to clear out. When we leave here, we’re all going back to Aunt Cathy’s house to eat. Then Grady and I are leaving to go home. Grandma has decided she’s going to stay so she can help Aunt Cathy’s husband clean out Aunt Cathy’s things, go through her paperwork, and put her house back to rights after all the people leave.
“It’s the least I can do,” Grandma had said when she told me her plans.
After Grandma gets tired of staying here, Mom and Dad will retrieve her and drive her back home in her own car. Grady and I will fly back to North Carolina tonight. Dad paid for both our tickets. Grady complained about it because he is certainly capable of buying his own. But Dad refused to let him, seeing as how he helped me drive all the way down to Florida in the middle of the night.
“You about ready to go?” I ask as the last person files out of the church. We didn’t have a graveside service because Aunty Cathy wanted to be cremated.
He nods. “We should probably go check out of the hotel if we’re flying out later,” he suggests.
“Do you think we have time for a walk on the beach?”
He looks down at his watch. “I don’t see why not. Our flight isn’t until late.”
“I want to put my toes in the sand,” I admit. While I don’t want to live by the ocean, I do like to visit it occasionally. I take great joy in small town life. That’s why I bought my house in Macon Hills. That’s why I set my life up the way I have, so that I can have freedom to live where I want. I chose Macon Hills. And I’m pretty sure I’ll choose it every day for the rest of my life.
“Have you ever thought about leaving Macon Hills?” I ask Grady later as we stand on the sand, our bare feet touching the water. It’s warm and fresh, and the sun is just bright enough to keep us comfortable.
He shakes his head. “Not really. Why do you ask?”
I shrug. “Just curious.” I smile at him and he searches my face.
“Why the question?” he wants to know.
I really didn’t have a reason for the question.
“I thought about it once,” he quietly admits after a moment of silence. He winces. “Back when Dad was on my ass all the time, wanting me to walk in his footsteps. That was pretty stressful. I wanted to get as far from Macon Hills as I could go, just to get out of the future he had laid out for me.”
“What changed your mind?” I ask. He takes my hand in his as we walk down the shore, the tiny shells caressing the bottoms of my bare feet.
He lets out a chuckle. “Ms. Markie,” he says. “She told me I’d be an idiot if I let my father decide how my life would go.”
“Grandma doesn’t suffer fools gladly,” I admit. “So you stayed because of what she said to you?”
“I stayed because I love the area. I love the town. I love the people in it. I know you think that the grapevine is shit, but I like knowing people in town, actually knowing their names, their kids, and even some of their secrets. I like going to ball games, and I like it when my older customers bake pies just for me and give them to me when I go to cut their grass.”
He rubs his stomach. “This paunch isn’t all from my love of french fries,” he goes on to say. “Some of it is Ruth Anne Denton’s rhubarb pie.”
“That’s why I came back,” I confess. “I love Macon Hills. When my parents moved away for their jobs, it always seemed like I was coming home when I came to visit Grandma. That’s why I came back. Because it’s home.”
“So you’re really going to stay,” he says as he stares at me.
I raise my eyebrows at him. “I bought a house, Grady,” I explain. “I’m staying.” I open my eyes wide at him. “I have cats. Big responsibility.” I grin. “And I’ve decided that I’m going to go get your dog as soon as the Fallwells say that she’s ready to go. I’m taking her home with me and I’m not going to give her back. If you want to see her, you’ll have to come to my house.”
He glares at me playfully. “You would steal my dog? Seriously?” He mimes stabbing himself in the back.
“Drastic measures,” I say with a shrug.
The sun starts to set, and Grady looks down at his watch. “We should probably get to Cathy’s house. Our plane leaves in a few hours,” he reminds me. He swings our clasped hands between us. “Do you want to come back here one weekend? Maybe for a vacation?”
I motion from me to him and back again. “You mean me and you?”
“No, you and the dog. I suppose I’ll have to stay home to take care of the cats,” he replies drolly. He jerks on my hand. “Of course, me and you. If you could go anywhere, where would it be? Your favorite vacation destination? What is it?”
And it’s in that moment that I realize how much Grady and I don’t know about one another. We don’t know nearly enough. I’m kind of glad that Grady has been hell-bent on slowing us down. We need to get to know one another, and we need to learn about more than how to fight with each other.