My Tribal Rule Said Marry Or Matchmake novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: Yes

They took Granny back at six-thirty in the morning.

She was awake enough to boss the nurse about her teeth.

I kissed her forehead at the double doors.

"You come back out," I said. "That's an order."

"I raised you," she said. "I give the orders."

Then the doors swung shut and she was gone.

Jeb went down to the cafeteria and came back with two biscuits wrapped in napkins.

I couldn't eat mine. He ate it for me so it wouldn't go to waste.

At eight, the elder came in on his cane, with Jeb's mama holding his elbow.

He'd put on a tie.

He sat down across the hall from us, looked at the two of us side by side, and didn't say a word.

He didn't have to. He'd been matching people for sixty years.

At ten-forty, the cardiologist came through the doors with her cap in her hand.

She was smiling.

"New valve's in and working," she said. "She asked for coffee before she was all the way awake."

I sat down on the floor of the hallway.

I didn't mean to. My knees just quit.

Jeb crouched down in front of me.

The elder thumped his cane once on the tile.

"Well," he said. "That's that."

***

They let me see her at noon.

She was propped up on three pillows with tubes in her arm and her braid undone.

She looked about a hundred years old and fierce as a hawk.

"Where's my cardigan?"

"In a bag. Nobody cut it."

"Good."

She looked past me, at Jeb in the doorway with his cap.

"You two made up."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes, ma'am," Jeb said.

"About time. I was about to have another heart attack just to get you in the same room."

She closed her eyes, smiling.

At six, the night nurse found me still in the chair.

"Go home," she said. "Shower. Sleep in a bed. She'll still be cranky in the morning."

"I can't leave her."

"Honey, she told me to throw you out. Her words were stronger."

***

Jeb's cabin sat up the ridge above the sawmill, at the end of a two-track lane.

He'd built it himself. Every beam was oak he'd cut and pegged.

There was a woodstove, a long table, a wall of books, and one big window looking out over the whole hollow.

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