If You Come Softly Read Online Free Page A

to the stove and stirred the sauce once more. Jeremiah watched her lift spaghetti from the colander onto the blue plates they always ate off. The plates had been a wedding gift from his grandmother—his father’s mother. Sometimes the memory of her crept up quickly—unexpected—like somebody sneaking up behind you in the dark. He missed his grandmother more than anything. In February it would be five years since she passed. Jeremiah twirled the saltshaker absently, wondering how long it took before you stopped missing someone.
    “I was thinking about Grandma just now,” he said.
    “Yeah? What were you thinking?”
    “Just about her. She came into my mind.” He bit his bottom lip. “Remember that time she was interviewed about Daddy?”
    His mama smiled. It was a sad smile, full of good and bad memories. Jeremiah was sorry he had even started talking about his grandma. Sometimes he forgot that Grandma was his father’s mother.
    Mama put the plates of spaghetti down on the table. “Which time?” she asked.
    “I don’t remember the show. I think it was around the time of the first Oscar nomination. Remember, she wore that bright red dress and that silly necklace I’d made her—the one made out of bottle tops?”
    His mama smiled.
    “She said that even though he was a big-time moviemaker, she had changed his diapers and she could tell everyone listening that Daddy’s poop smelled just as bad as anybody else’s. Later on, she’d told me she wanted to use the other word, but it would have gotten bleeped out and she wanted to make sure the American audience got the message.”
    “I thought Norman was going to lose it for sure.”
    “Me and Grandma laughed about that for a long time,” he said softly.
    Jeremiah ran his fingers slowly across the table. Outside he could hear little girls singing, “Miss Lucy had a baby, she named him Tiny Tim...” He swallowed. When he had looked into that girl’s eyes today, he saw something familiar in them. A little bit of himself there. Where was she now?
    “Want some wine, high-school boy?” She poured a glass of red wine for herself and waited.
    Jeremiah sighed, knowing his mama was trying to change the subject. I miss you, Grandma. You would be able to tell me, wouldn’t you? You’d be able to make everything all right.
    “Pinot Noir,” she said. “Supposed to be a good vintage-1993 from the Napa Valley.”
    Before they separated, his mother and father had gone to the wine country. When they came home, his mama filled him in on everything she’d learned about wine, and together they sat sipping various wines and comparing them. He wasn’t really allowed to drink yet, but his mother still offered and told him everything she knew about certain wines. She said she wanted him to be knowledgeable when the time came to choose one.
    “Nah. 1993 wasn’t great for Pinot Noirs. If you had a Cabernet or even a Petite Syrah then maybe.”
    His mama smiled.
    They were quiet for a moment. Jeremiah watched her dance a hot loaf of bread from the oven to the table and wondered again how his father could have just fallen for someone else. Yeah, over and over, his father had tried to explain it to him, and each time Jeremiah thought he finally understood. But then he’d come home some evening and find his mother sitting in front of the television in the empty living room and his heart would tighten inside his chest. She looked lonely and lost sitting in the half-light.
    “Mama? You ever planning on writing another book?”
    It seemed a long time ago when he would come home to find her writing in her study. She had written three novels and had always said she wanted to write ten in her lifetime. And for a while, Jeremiah thought she’d do it. But after his father left, she had stopped writing and Jeremiah rarely found her in her study anymore.
    She sat down across from him and frowned. “What makes you ask that?”
    Jeremiah shrugged. “Just wondering.”
    “Well, eat