Chapter 9: Grandma

The note had been in my coat pocket since the night of the dinner.

One of my aunts, Dad's older sister, had pushed it into my hand in the hall while Mom was looking at the stairs.

It was an address in the Finger Lakes, and under it she had written in blue ink: "Go see your grandmother."

On Saturday, Luka drove me there in his gray hatchback and parked at a diner two miles down the road.

"I'll be here," he said. "Don't hurry."

The house sat at the end of a gravel drive, white and square, with a porch that faced the water.

A woman in scrubs opened the door, looked at my face, and said, "Oh."

Then she said, "Oh, honey. She's going to cry. Don't let her tell you she isn't."

Grandma was in a wicker chair on the porch with a blanket over her knees and a crossword in her lap.

She was eighty, small, and sharp-eyed, with white hair cut short.

She looked up, and the pencil stopped moving.

"Well," she said. "There it is."

"There what is?"

"The chin." She pointed the pencil at me. "That's your grandfather's chin. Come here."

I crossed the porch, and she took my face in both hands, which were thin and dry and astonishingly strong.

She looked at me for a long time.

"They said you'd never come," she said.

"I didn't know where you were."

"I know. I'm beginning to understand that." She let go and patted the chair beside her. "Sit. Eat something. Nurse, bring the lemon cake."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Reborn to Ruin the Perfect Fake Heiress from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.