“She stays here year-round?”
“Yes.” He chuckled then. “She’s quite adamant that she’ll never become one of those snowbirds who flies to Florida before the first snowflake falls. She and my late grandfather had always planned to retire here. He died when I was six. Heart attack. She was still set on moving to Charlevoix eventually. She was already looking at places at the time of the accident. Then she put everything on hold.”
For him.
“Sorry about your grandfather,” Elizabeth murmured. Josephine O’Keefe had lost her husband and only child in the span of two years. It wasn’t only pity Elizabeth felt for the other woman, but admiration. She’d rolled up her sleeves and put her own plans on hold to raise a young, equally grief-stricken boy. “Your grandmother sounds like an amazing woman.”
Thomas glanced over. His hand left the steering wheel to give hers a gentle squeeze. “She is. You’re going to like her.”
Elizabeth didn’t need his reassurance. She already did, and it was a realization that made her all the more uneasy.
Nana Jo lived in a condominium complex not far from downtown, but only a short distance from the lake.
“Well, this is it,” Thomas said, pulling into the parking lot. He sounded every bit as nervous as Elizabeth felt when he asked, “Ready?”
“As I’m ever going to be,” she murmured.
She opened the car door before he had a chance to come around and do it for her, earning a frown. The day was warm, a fact the automobile’s air-conditioning had done a good job of camouflaging. The sun’s heat would have been unbearable if not for the stiff breeze blowing in off the lakes. It snatched at her neatly ordered hair and sent it flying around her face.
It also brought with it the appealing scents of summer, including the smoke from someone’s barbecue. Before she’d dozed off, Thomas had asked if she wanted to stop for a bite to eat. She’d told him no, that she wasn’t hungry. At the time she hadn’t been. Nerves had tied her stomach into knots and she had been eager to get to their final destination. Now, her stomach growled and she found herself wishing for the last-minute reprieve of a meal.
Before she could say so to Thomas, however, she heard a squeal of delight. She turned to see a stylish older woman with a short cap of silver hair bustling across the parking lot toward them with her smile stretching nearly as wide as her arms.
“Tommy!”
He hugged the woman back, picking her up off her feet in the process. Elizabeth smiled as she watched them and something inside of her shifted to boggy ground once again. What was it Mel always said? You can judge how a man will treat you by the way he treats his mother. Nana Jo wasn’t Thomas’s mother, but close enough that her friend’s pearls of wisdom applied. God help her.
“It’s good to see you, too,” he managed to respond after a moment.
Raw emotion thickened his voice, leaving no doubt as to the deep love Thomas had for his grandmother, the deep love they had for one another. Tragedy had made their bond all the stronger. Elizabeth admired it. She admired them for the way they obviously cherished it.
Two expectant gazes focused on her then. Showtime, she thought, wishing wildly, before she could catch herself, that the moment could be real. That she could be the love of Thomas’s life, brought home to meet the woman who’d raised him.
“And you’re Tommy’s Beth.”
Even if Elizabeth had had time to stick out a hand in a gesture of greeting, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nana Jo closed the distance between them in short order and pulled her into an embrace that, while not strong enough to break bones, thoroughly shattered Elizabeth’s preconceptions of Josephine O’Keefe as a frail octogenarian nearing the end of her days.
“H-h-hi.” The single syllable sputtered out along with Elizabeth’s breath as the woman rocked her side to side.
“Nana Jo, stop. You’ll crush her,” Thomas chided lightly when the embrace lengthened.
His grandmother pulled back on a robust laugh. “I’m sorry, my dear. It’s just that I’m so tickled to finally meet you. Tommy has told me so much about you.”
She patted Elizabeth’s cheek before grasping her lightly by the arms and taking a step back. Then she frowned.
“I have to admit, I pictured you a little differently.”
“Different h-how?” Elizabeth cast a nervous glance toward Thomas. What sort of description had he given her?
“I don’t know. Just … just thinking out loud and being insufferably rude,” she apologized.
“That’s not necessary. I can honestly say you’re not quite how I pictured you, either.” If Nana Jo’s health was failing it sure didn’t show.
“It’s just that you’re such a tiny thing,” mused Nana Jo, who stood half a head taller and had a more substantial build. She smiled at Thomas. “The breeze coming off Lake Michigan will blow her away if you’re not careful to keep a tight hold on her, Tommy.”
“I plan to do just that.”
His smile was as warm as the gaze he sent Elizabeth. Though the words were said for his grandmother’s benefit, Elizabeth’s breathing hitched and she smiled back.
Nana Jo grinned as well, before demanding of herself, “Goodness, where are my manners? You must think me a horrible hostess, Beth, waylaying you in the parking lot like this.” She winked from behind a pair of red-rimmed bifocals. “I plead guilty to watching for your arrival from my windows and then hurrying down here the minute I spotted you, too eager to wait for you to ring the doorbell. Pop open the trunk of that fancy car of yours, Tommy. Let’s get your bags and go inside where we can all sit down and have a proper visit. I just made a fresh pitcher of iced tea and some cookies.”
Elizabeth could see where Thomas had learned his polite ways, but that wasn’t what had her casting an urgent glance in his direction.
“I—I thought we were staying at a bed- and-breakfast in town, Thomas?”
“We are.” Both his expression and tone were apologetic when he told his grandmother, “I’ve booked rooms for Elizabeth and I at the Daniels Cottage over on Edgewater, Nana.”
“We didn’t want to impose,” Elizabeth explained.
Nana Jo made a tsking sound and waved one hand impatiently. “Impose? Nonsense! It’s no imposition. Of course you’ll stay here. I have plenty of space.” To Thomas she said, “Beth will sleep in the guest room. I put fresh linens on the bed just this morning.”
“Where will I be sleeping?” Thomas asked innocently. But Elizabeth thought she caught a dash of the devil in his otherwise angelic expression.
“On the couch,” Nana Jo retorted. “I’m too old-fashioned to agree to let you sleep in the same room with Beth, whether she’s your fiancée or not.”
She winked again at Elizabeth, who felt her face catch fire.
“Really, that’s very kind. But I … we couldn’t put you out like that,” Elizabeth began. “Besides, Thomas already made the reservations.”
It was a weak argument that Nana Jo dismantled easily. “He can unmake them. If the owner gives you any trouble, Tommy, I’ll talk to him. I know Ned and Estelle from church.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Estelle is on the list to bring dessert for funeral lunches, but we never put her rum cake out. She’s a little too liberal with the libations, if you know what I mean.”
“But—”
“Not another word. I won’t have it any other way. You’re all but family now, my dear, and family is never a bother. Tell her, Tommy.”
Before