Chapter 15: Dinner With His Grandmother

Lucinda's eight letters were all addressed to the same man, and every one of them asked for the same thing.

How is the child's heart? Send me the cardiology bill, and send it to no one else.

I read them in Raylan's passenger seat on the way to Cascade Road, with my father asleep in the back under a borrowed overcoat.

I had meant to be angry the whole way.

Instead I kept finding another bill she'd paid.

"We're here," Raylan said. "Whatever you read, it will keep for one dinner. My grandmother does not hold her peas for anyone."

His grandmother lived in a yellow brick ranch house with a wheelchair ramp she refused to use and a plastic runner on the hall carpet.

She opened the door before we knocked.

She was small and straight-backed in a lavender church dress, with white hair set in rollers under a net.

She looked at my hair, at the thick glasses, at the old men's watch on my wrist.

Then she looked at her grandson.

"So this is the one who made you say sorry in front of three hundred people," she said.

"Grandma."

"I saw it on the computer. Your cousin sent it to the whole family."

"I have been waiting thirty-three years for someone to do that."

She took my chin in two fingers and turned my face to the light.

"You're too thin. Sit down."

"Ma'am, this is Luther Merriman," Raylan said, "who needs a place to stay tonight."

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