She shook her head. “How do you know he told the truth? Wouldn’t a drug dealer lie?”
Lottie snorted. “That boy wouldn’t lie. Besides, I made sure his story checked out.”
Sometimes Lottie fancied herself Elliot Ness. What she probably did was use “the Google,” as she called it.
The microwave pinged three times. Lottie took out the plate and the aroma of meatloaf filled the kitchen. She brought it over to the table. “Eat.”
“Thank you, Grandma,” Rachel replied, lifting her fork. “So why did Jamie come over?”
“To see me.” Lottie poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from her. Lottie always said the last cup of coffee before going to bed was the most delicious. If Rachel drank coffee that late, she’d never get to bed.
She swallowed the bite in her mouth, studying her grandmother. “Why did he want to see you?”
“He asked me what word I’d give you.”
“Really?” She froze, oddly touched and more than a little vulnerable thinking of what Lottie might have said. No one knew her better than her grandma. “What did you say?”
“What do you think I’d say?” Lottie asked her in the reverse-psychology voice Rachel had hated during her teenage years.
“I don’t know,” she said evenly. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I gave him a word too,” her grandma said, watching her as she sipped her coffee. “But it’s not the words I’d choose that are important. It’s what you pick for yourself.”
“I know that.” She eyed her grandmother. She recognized what was going on here. It wasn’t often when Lottie thought she needed a kick in the pants, but when she did it, she did it fully.
The last time had been right before she’d finally decided to leave Kevin. She’d been visiting her grandma, feeling low, when Lottie got in her face and said, “If you aren’t happy being with him, what are you doing there? Are you really going to spend the next sixty years being miserable like this?”
She hadn’t thought of it that way before. Not that she thought Kevin would stay with her that long, because she felt like he’d already been sniffing around other skirts, as Lottie would say.
She didn’t have to wait long for Lottie to make her move. “There’s a lot of chatter in life. It’s up to us to listen to everything and decide which are the right words for ourselves. Some words are better ignored, and some are better explored.” Lottie leaned forward. “Sometimes the rightest of words isyes.”
“Is that what you think I should say to him?” she asked after a moment.
“That’s for you to decide.”
Setting her fork down, Rachel wiped her mouth on a napkin and sat back. “What would you do?”
Lottie laughed. “Sweetheart, if I were just twenty years younger, I’d be all over that Didier like butter on bread.”
She raised her brows. “Didier? Not Jamie?”
“I like a little spice to my men.”
“Jamie’s not spicy?” she asked, curious.
“He’s spicy, but Didier is a foreign spice that’s mysterious, like what I imagine riding on a camel through a bazaar would be like.” She got a faraway, wistful look on her face, like she was imagining it but had resigned herself to never having it.
Rachel gaped at Lottie. Her grandma had never mentioned anything about wanting to ride a camel—she hadn’t mentioned ever regretting anything at all. She’d always seemed so content here in the old neighborhood.
Sighing, Lottie shook her head and got up from the table. “You’ll wash the dishes?”
“Of course. Thanks for dinner, Grandma,” she said, watching her shuffle out of the kitchen.
Rachel scraped the residue of her food into the trash and then washed the dishes. Her grandma had a dishwasher, but she only used it when she had company. She thought it was silly to use it when it was just the two of them.
Because she needed time to think, Rachel wiped down the counters, stove, and table for good measure. Rinsing the dishcloth, she wrung it out and hung it up, surveying the kitchen.
She wanted to sayyesto Jamie. She had from the moment she’d met him. Why was she dragging her feet?