“What?”
“Prom.”
She stared at me.
“With you?”
“Unless you’ve got a hotter invitation.”
“Noah.”
“I’m serious.”
She laughed.
I didn’t.
Her smile faded.
“Sweetheart.”
“You said yourself senior prom only happens once.”
“I absolutely did not say that.”
“Someone wise did.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Come.”
She dried her hands slowly.
“I don’t belong at your prom.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m seventy-one.”
“That’s ageist.”
“Noah.”
“You dance.”
“Badly.”
“So do I.”
“You should ask a girl.”
“I am.”
She smacked me with the dish towel.
I grinned.
Then I saw tears gathering in her eyes.
Immediately, the joking stopped.
“Grandma?”
She sat.
For a long moment, she looked down at her hands.
“They’ll laugh.”
I knew exactly who she meant.
My stomach tightened.
“No, they won’t.”
She looked up.
She knew I was lying.
Maybe she’d always known.
Maybe every joke I’d hidden had somehow reached her anyway.
“I don’t want to embarrass you,” she whispered.
The sentence shattered me.
I crouched beside her chair.
“You could never embarrass me.”
“You’re eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds care what people think.”
“I care what you think.”
“That’ll change.”
“No.”
I held her hands.
They were rough.
Scarred in tiny places.
Knuckles swollen with arthritis.
Hands that had washed school floors, flipped pancakes, checked fevers, signed report cards, repaired Halloween costumes, carried grocery bags and held mine every time life frightened me.
“If I only get one first dance at my senior prom,” I told her, “I want it with the person who made sure I got there.”
She began to cry.
Then I began to cry because I inherited absolutely no emotional toughness whatsoever.
She kissed my forehead.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“One dance.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“One and a half.”
“How do you dance half a dance?”
“We’ll innovate.”
She laughed.
And just like that, we had a date.
The night before prom, I came home and found Grandma sitting at the kitchen table with an old wooden box.
I’d seen the box before.
She kept it on the top shelf of her closet.
It contained photographs of Mom.
At least, that’s what she’d told me.
The lid snapped shut when I entered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Definitely looked like something.”
“Private old-lady business.”
“That sounds illegal.”
She stood too quickly.
For half a second, she swayed.
I reached for her.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You look pale.”
“I’m seventy-one. Pale is part of the package.”
She carried the box toward her bedroom.
Something fell.
A photograph.
I bent to pick it up.
Grandma spun around.
“Noah.”
But I’d already seen it.
My mother.
Emily.
She couldn’t have been older than seventeen.
She was sitting on the hood of an old car, laughing at whoever held the camera.
I had seen dozens of pictures of her.
But this one was different.
She wore a silver necklace.
A circular pendant split through the center.
I stared.
For some reason, it looked familiar.
“Who’s pendant is that?”
Grandma took the picture.
“Your mother’s.”
“I’ve seen something like it.”
“Probably. They were popular.”
She placed the photo inside the box.
Her hands were shaking.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
Then she smiled too brightly.
“Tomorrow is a big day.”
I let it go.
I shouldn’t have.
