When Keith started college, his parents left Shelter Valley on a church service mission in Cairo. His father was Grandma’s only child. Consumed by their jobs as house parents at an orphanage there, they’d returned to Shelter Valley just once in fifteen years. Their deaths in a bus accident shortly after Katie was born had left Grandma and Keith as the only surviving members of their family. But no matter how lonely Grandma might feel, or how much she might want to be with the kids, she always made excuses. When Bonnie and Keith got married more than six years before, Grandma had determined that she would not interfere with their lives. Which was why her car was never seen in her grandson’s driveway. Whether for Sunday dinner, Friday-night canasta, holidays or anything in between, Keith more often than not had to go and get her or she wouldn’t come.
Wet hands in the sink, Bonnie looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his.
“You’re a good man, Keith Nielson.” The whispered words came from her very depths.
Almost as if they drew him, Keith moved toward her, then bent to press his lips to hers. The wealth of love she’d been feeling since she’d walked in the door that evening just continued, fueling the kiss. God, she loved this man. Wanted him.
There was never any doubt about that.
“Gotta go,” Keith muttered, obviously reluctant.
He kissed her again, raising a longing in Bonnie that could easily have consumed her. A longing for life to be only this. A sure knowledge of what was.
He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching hers.
“I’ll, uh, make brownies for when you get back.” She stumbled over the words.
They were the right ones. Keith’s face softened, the question in his eyes fading as he nodded, grabbed his keys and strode out the door.
Making brownies. Kind of a code.
It had all started that first time she’d made brownies after they were married. They’d been in the kitchen of the little house they’d rented on the back of the Weber property. The Webers were the owners of Shelter Valley’s only department store, and their son, Jim, had graduated from high school a couple of years behind Bonnie.
It hadn’t been after dinner then, but fairly late on a Sunday morning. She and Keith had missed church because they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other long enough to get out of bed. But they couldn’t miss the lunch Grandma had invited them to share with her, and Bonnie had promised to bring brownies.
She’d started the project fully dressed in a completely respectable, unsexy pair of sweats and a T-shirt. She’d even had a bra and panties on underneath.
And then Keith had announced that for every ingredient she added to the brownies, she had to take something off.
She’d been using a mix and had ended up naked when all the ingredients were in the bowl.
The batter had been delicious.
They’d had to stop and buy brownies at the grocery store on their way to Grandma’s.
Pretty much ever since, whenever she made brownies, they also made love.
Bonnie finished the dishes, a smile on her face.
CHAPTER FOUR
GRANDMA DISCARDED the two of diamonds. And she had no meld. When she’d picked up a couple of fours and then discarded a four, Bonnie had wondered—in canasta you could never have too many of whatever you were saving. But to discard a wild card without a meld…
“You want to skip the rest of the game and go straight to the brownies?” Keith asked her.
“I can finish.”
“But do you want to?” Bonnie pushed. Though she’d obviously freshened her makeup, Grandma still looked exhausted. Her slacks and blouse were wrinkled, her shoulders slumped, and her gaze not as open and clear as usual.
“Yes, I want to.” But she obviously didn’t.
Sending her concerned husband a reassuring smile, Bonnie packed up the cards and cut the brownies. Grandma asked about Katie, who’d been going to bed when she’d arrived, asked if Bonnie had seen Becca Parsons that day and if Becca had said anything about a long-range planning committee meeting the next morning. She asked about Keith’s work.
And she avoided Keith’s attempts to tell her to slow down. When they asked about Dorothy, her answers were brief and seemingly carefree.
After two brownies, Grandma was ready to go home.
Keith rose to get his keys.
“Why don’t you stay and finish up in here,” she told her grandson, waving toward the dessert plates and napkins, half-empty milk glasses and score card still on the table. “Bonnie can take me home.”
Exchanging one more silent look with her husband, Bonnie followed the older woman out the garage door to her van.
“YOU’VE GOT TO TELL that grandson of mine to let up on me.”
Bonnie hadn’t even backed out of the garage before Grandma spoke.
Easing the van into the quiet street, she flipped on her headlights and put it in drive. “He just cares about you, Grandma.”
“I know that. I care about him, too. Far more than he’ll probably ever know. Which is why it’s so hard to keep fighting him. I have enough to do without expending energy fighting with him.” Bonnie was amazed at how the older woman could take a much-repeated grumble and speak it with such convincing authority.
“He won’t listen to me on this one.” Bonnie said the same thing she always did.
“I mean it, Bonnie. I need his support right now.”
Turning a corner, Bonnie slowed and glanced at Grandma, a knot in her stomach. “What’s up?” she asked.
“I will not turn my back on my friends.”
“I know that.”
“I’m seventy-six years old, not dead.”
“I know that, too.”
“But do you?” Grandma asked. Bonnie had pulled into Grandma’s drive, but the old woman made no move to get out of the car. She stared at Bonnie through the semidarkness, her eyes faded and watery. “Do you have any idea how it feels to have lived a full, productive life and then to discover that because you’ve had one too many birthdays, everyone suddenly thinks you no longer have anything significant to offer?”
Grandma’s words, though softly spoken, reverberated through the van, knocking the breath out of Bonnie.
“I think I do,” she whispered. She didn’t know which was worse—thinking that you were giving nothing significant, or having others think you were incapable of giving.
She wasn’t sure it even mattered.
“I’ll talk to him.”
She watched Grandma to her door with a new understanding, one that effected a change she wasn’t sure she fully grasped. Grandma wasn’t the only person who got older. There was an entire community of elderly citizens in Shelter Valley.
She wondered how many of them were fighting the same frustrations she’d been fighting these past months. The need to be needed. Or to make a difference in a world that cried out for help.
And wondered if there were answers for any of them.
KEITH WAS WAITING for her when she got home. Only the small light over the kitchen sink was glowing. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” played on the stereo behind her.
Bonnie smiled.
He walked toward her, unbuttoning his shirt. His longish