Child of Their Vows

“What happened?” Kelly demanded, hurrying across the room to her grandmother’s side. “Are you all right, Gran?”

“Nothing serious. I just twisted my ankle while I was on my power walk this evening,” Gran said, adjusting the ice pack.

“The ankle’s badly swollen,” Erin elaborated, pushing back her long blond hair. “I came by to drop off some homemade strawberry jam and found her crawling on her hands and knees.”

“It’s nothing,” Gran insisted fretfully. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m taking you to see Ben first thing in the morning,” Geena said, referring to her husband, a local G.P. One hand rested lightly on little Sonja’s rounded diaper-clad bottom. “I’d have brought him with me tonight, but he’s doing an emergency appendectomy.”

“You should have called me,” Kelly scolded her Gran. She lifted the ice pack and winced at the swollen mottled skin. “Hang on and I’ll get an Ace bandage from the first-aid kit in my car.”

When she got back inside, Erin was administering anti-inflammatory tablets to the resistant septuagenarian. Kelly pulled up a stool before Gran’s chair and expertly wrapped the elderly woman’s ankle in a neat herringbone pattern.

“You’re good, Kel,” Geena said, admiring her sister’s handiwork. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“I take a refresher first-aid course every couple of years. With four kids you’ve got to be ready to handle anything.” The minicrisis of Gran’s ankle had pushed Max and Randall from her mind, but mentioning her children brought it all back in a rush.

Gran must have seen something in her face. “What’s wrong, Kelly?”

Kelly rose, walked a few paces and sank into an overstuffed chair. “Nothing.”

Geena, sitting opposite, brushed wispy auburn bangs off her face and looked Kelly over closely. “Yes, there is. Your eyes are swollen and red. You’ve been crying.”

“Tell us what’s the matter, Kel,” Erin said.

Kelly stared into the empty fireplace, not knowing where to start. Then she released a deep sigh. “Max and I had a fight.”

“Pass me my knitting, Geena, honey,” Gran said in a low voice.

“Did you argue about your work again?” Geena asked sympathetically as she handed Gran a tapestry bag stuffed with yarn and needles.

“No…” Although she’d learned about Max’s son two weeks ago, she hadn’t yet confided in her sisters or Gran, hoping the whole nightmare would blow over. Now she could use some moral support. “Max had an affair the summer after high school with a girl on a dude ranch,” she began, and went on to tell them the whole story.

“Oh, Kelly, sweetie,” Geena said when Kelly finally finished. She put a hand over her sister’s and squeezed. “This is dreadful. I can’t believe he didn’t tell you long ago.”

“I can’t believe this is Max we’re talking about,” Erin said, equally shocked. “You and he have been together since your junior prom.”

Gran knit quietly. So quietly Kelly had to ask, “Did you know about the baby, Gran?”

Gran’s soft brown eyes were thoughtful behind her oversize blue plastic glasses. Slowly, she shook her head. “No. And frankly, I’m surprised they managed to keep it quiet in a small place like Hainesville. At the time I did think it odd that Max and his parents were making so many trips out of town. I knew you were serious about Max so I was worried he was in some kind of trouble. But he went off to college as expected and nothing seemed amiss.” She paused to count stitches, then turned her needles and started another row. “One thing I never doubted was that he loved you.”

“He should have trusted her, too—enough to tell her the truth,” Erin said.

“Well…he didn’t want to risk losing me.” Kelly caught herself defending him and hardened her voice. “And he was right to worry.”

She slumped her aching head into her propped-up hand. “He invited Randall—that’s his son’s name—to stay with us for the summer…without even asking me!”

“You two need to sit down, calmly and rationally, and work through your problems,” Gran said, glancing up from her knitting.

“How can she be calm when she’s hurting so badly?” Erin demanded. “I love Max like a brother, but I think he’s way off base for even suggesting a visit before clearing it with Kelly. It’s adding insult to injury.”