Page 121 of Snow Falls Over Starry Cove
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Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
The next day I’m ready to get up. I pad downstairs into Grandmother’s drawing room.
‘Oh, hello, Emmie. I didn’t hear you come in. Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, Grandmother. And thank you. For taking care of me. And for sending Jago away. I saw him from my window.’
She looks at me with those huge turquoise eyes.
‘About Stephen,’ I begin. ‘We broke up some time ago. But he won’t let it go. If he ever comes back…’
‘I’ll know what to do,’ she says with a nod. ‘Funny, what love makes people do.’
She looks a little strange and then, glancing down at the coffee table, I understand. Her eyes follow mine.
‘My wedding album. Daft, I know, but I really miss the old man.’
‘Oh, Grandmother, that’s not daft at all.’
‘I don’t want to bore you,’ she says, closing the album.
‘Please, Grandmother. I want to look with you, if that’s OK?’
‘You want to see your grandmother when she was still unwrinkled, then?’
I laugh. ‘Please.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Her puny beringed fingers reach for the corner of the album and almost reverently open it from the beginning. There are so many pictures of them going back at least sixty years. And in each and every picture, Nano has his arms around her. You can almost touch the love. So much love, and now it’s all gone.
I look up at her and I want to hold her in my arms and tell her I understand how she feels. To have loved so much and lost… there is no remedy, no antidote. You can never be the same, after having lost true love, can you?
‘You must be exhausted – and starving. Let me call for something to eat.’
I still her with my hand. ‘I’ll do it, Grandmother. You just relax. What would you like?’
‘Whatever you choose. I am not really hungry, Emmie.’
‘Had a cracker yesterday, did you?’ I quip, grinning at her over my shoulder.
‘There is some good cheese and a fresh loaf of bread in the pantry. And some fresh coffee beans, if you are making.’
‘Coming right up,’ I reply.
A few minutes later, I’ve brewed the coffee and made several rolls, which I put on a tray on the coffee table before I slip off my shoes and tuck my feet under me. Her eyes flicker over my casual, unladylike position but says nothing. She’s slowly warming to me – I can feel it.
‘So, Grandmother, how are you really doing?’
‘Me? I’m well, Emily. What I would really like to know is why you broke your engagement off.’
And so I tell her everything about Stephen, about the mugging, and about Audrey and her lack of respect for me, as Grandmother sits there, her knowing eyes studying me.
‘Well?’ I prompt. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think that you were brave to follow your instincts. Many women don’t have that kind of courage.’
