Not Looking For Love: Episode 2 Read Online Free Page B

bed is pure mahogany that gleams in the sunlight, complete with a white linen canopy. She brought all her own furniture with her when she moved in here two years ago after she broke her hip.
    "Hi, Gran," I say loudly, because she didn't hear me come in. "How are you?"
    She turns to me in a series of jerky movements.   "Gail, sweetheart. How is your mother?"
    Her voice is hard, cuts like a sword. But her wide, watery eyes and shaking bottom lip betray her terror at the news I might be bringing. I force myself to smile, and stride over to her. "Mom is fine. Or you know…"
    My voice cracks and I can't finish the sentence.  
    Gran turns back to the window, and I sit in the matching armchair across from her.
    "I would like to go and see her, one last time," Gran says so softly, I'm not sure I even heard it.
    "I can come pick you up and drive you there anytime," I say. "Or we can go now, and I'll bring you back tonight."
    Gran takes a long, shuddering breath, which makes the papery skin on her face shake. "Not today, I've been having my spells all day. I'm afraid to even leave the room. On Sunday, perhaps."
    I nod and gaze out the window too. A few of the retirees are making their way slowly along the wide paths that transverse the sprawling garden, clutching their walkers and moving at a snail's pace.  
    Gran whimpers. "I never thought I would live to bury my children. The pain is unbearable. I hope you never have to face it."
    "I won't," I say and cross my legs. "I'm not planning on having any children."
    "That's certainly one way to sort it," she says, a flash of the haughty, feisty heiress she once was clear in her voice. She places her hand over my knee. "But you'll change your mind, Gail, once you're a little older."
    "No." Heat from her hand is searing through my leg.  
    "I lost my first baby during World War II," she says, again gazing out the window. "I woke up one morning with a terrible pain in my stomach, and blood covering the sheets."
    "Was it Edmond's baby?" I blurt out.  
    A twitch twists her cheek, and she squeezes my knee. "Dear Edmond. Yes it was his."
    The thought of him dying under machine gun fire on D-Day, just as his only child died in the womb is unbearable, but I ask anyway, "Did you love him very much?"
    "I did and I still do," she says and smiles sadly, the years melting away from her face.  
    "How can you still love him?" The thought alone chokes me, and here she is looking like Edmond just walked into the room, ready to whisk her away and marry her.
    "I accepted that it could never be, Gail. I've lived a good long life, and Edmond was a part of it, if only for a short while. It makes me glad to know that."
    None of what she's saying makes any sense to me. I want to erase Scott from my thoughts, and the day I never think of him again will be the happiest of my life.
    "Would you like to see him?"
    I gasp, sure she's talking about Scott, and I'm angry because the answer is yes. But she knows nothing about Scott, and she never will.
    "Sure," I mutter and stand up, ready to bring her the photo album she keeps in the top drawer of a pitch black, gleaming dresser. The album is a giant, leather bound thing, with silver flowers worked into the covers and it's filled with black and white photos of her living it up with the Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts, and who knows which other old money families, out in the Hamptons.
    She shakes her head as I lift it from the drawer. "Not there, in the nightstand. It's in a little leather case."
    I rummage through the crosswords, bits of paper and other odds and ends in the drawer before I finally find it. The young man staring at me is wearing a uniform, his eyes scared and lost, begging me to tell him he can come home. But his mouth is set in a firm straight line, accepting his fate. To my one and only, Love Ed, is written in fading black ink on the back.
    Tears are trickling down my cheeks and I'm frozen still, just staring at those words, the weight of his death