Page 37 of Mountain Bean Dream
Grandma held her cards like she did her cookies, tight and close. “Molly, have you seen the renovations to the old Honeysuckle suite? Jimmy says it’s the nicest it’s ever been.”
Jeremy cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed, and lowered his voice to a barely audible level. “That’s the suite I now live in.”
“Oh yeah?” I cocked a brow as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Do all the suites have names?”
“Just a couple. They used to, now they’re just numbers,” he answered.
“How are my flowers doing?” Grandma picked up a card and set one from her hand down.
Jeremy picked that card up and shuffled it into his hand, dropping another. “Still growing, Grandma. Tulips are just getting ready to poke through, and the perennials are just waiting for a little more heat.”
There was a beautiful flower garden in the centre of theparking lot; a grove of leafy trees with an array of colourful blooms surrounding it. At least there was, according to the pictures on the web. I hadn’t been there long enough to see it all in bloom as everything was dying from an early blast of cold when I arrived at the end of September.
Grandma stared at her cards before looking at me. “Those trees, the ones in the garden, they’re original to the place. Made sure the builders left them alone. Same with most of the others on the property.”
I pulled a card off the top of the pile, not sure if I needed it. The game rules were still a little fuzzy, but I was sure after a few rounds, I’d catch on. “How old is the motel?”
“Built in 1973.” Grandma didn’t skip a beat and grabbed another card to replace the one in her hand. “Original owners until my boy Jimmy took over thanks to that no-good daughter of mine, who just up and left with that hippie gang when little Jimmy was nine. Haven’t heard from her since 1997, but I bet on my deathbed she’ll show up for the will. Too bad I already cut her out.”
The bite in her voice made my stomach churn, and I froze mid-turn. The unexpected revelation hung in the air, sharp and raw. My gaze darted to Jeremy, but he was focused on his cards, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. For someone as warm and open as Jeremy, I could only imagine how deeply a wound like that cut, especially if he’d been so young.
A ripple of unease swept over me. It felt intrusive to sit here, a stranger privy to this family history. Was I supposed to react? Ignore it? Pretend I didn’t just hear the wordsno-good daughter of mine? The sheer intensity of Grandma’s voice left little room for comfort.
I swallowed hard, feeling a pang of guilt for the thoughts I’d had about my own family. A part of me wanted to reach out, to say something, to acknowledge the weight of what Grandmahad just revealed. But what could I say? That I understood the ache of familial estrangement? That wouldn’t be entirely true, and this moment wasn’t about me. Yet the silence was deafening.
Jeremy met my eyes, his expression softening as if to say,It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. He mouthed, “I’ll explain later,” so discreetly that I almost missed it. The sadness in his eyes was unmistakable, though—like a child still longing for something he’d long ago accepted he’d never have. It hit me squarely in the chest, an ache I hadn’t been prepared for.
I nodded, quickly, tightly. The lump in my throat felt almost physical now, but I pressed it down and reached for a card. My hands were suddenly clammy, and I had to concentrate on keeping them steady. It wasn’t my place to dig deeper, not here, not now.
Grandma shuffled her cards with the deftness of someone who’d done this a thousand times, completely unbothered by the bomb she’d just dropped. “Your generation is so soft,” she muttered, almost to herself, but the sting in her words lingered.
Soft? I wasn’t so sure. It seemed to me like Jeremy had endured more than his fair share of hardness, and here he was, still kind, still thoughtful. If that was softness, then maybe the world could use a little more of it.
Jeremy broke the tension with a faint smile. “Grandma, I’m happy to be working at the motel. There’s no place else I’d rather be.”
“That’s my Jimmy.”
For a brief moment, the heaviness lifted, but the questions still lingered in the back of my mind. Who had Jeremy turned to when his mother left? How had that shaped the person he’d become? And why did Grandma’s words feel so personal, as if I was peeling back the first layers of something far deeper than I’d expected?
He kept his eyes trained on his hand until his eyes went wide, and with a flourish, he laid them down. “Rummy!”
Grandma moaned in mock defeat, showing off a set of threes, a set of sevens, and a ten. How did she manage that so quickly? My own cards were pairs at best.
“You rascal! Always showing off for the ladies.”
As he looked up from the table, he locked onto something. Someone.
Slowly, I turned and looked too. There was Derek walking by again, this time heading toward the entrance.
Jeremy placed his hand on mine, and my heart skipped a beat as I faced him, staring deep into his eyes. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he gently tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear and tipped his head toward me. His touch lingered a fraction of a second longer than necessary, but I wasn’t in a hurry for him to break the spell I was suddenly under.
Grandma cleared her throat and eyed me with a warning. “You might want to watch him. Jimmy’s got a habit of winning people over. Even the squirrels, eventually.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Thirteen
We parked my car at the end spot of the motel wing—the single-door ding spot.