Devoured

Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is an hour drive from Nashville.

It’s the halfway point between here and the prison in Lexington that houses my mother.

Honestly, I want to feel denial or shock or even anger—God knows I’ve experienced all three emotion and often at once when it comes to Mom in the past. As I fold the receipt into tiny, even squares, though, the only thing I feel is a sharp pang in the middle of my chest.

†

Kylie arrives early—a quarter ‘til seven, when I’m finishing up the last touches of my makeup—in the giant silver Cadillac SUV. She must not have gotten my message because she parks halfway up the drive and gets out of the car. As she practically skips toward the house, and into the path of the motion detection lights, I decide she looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in her blindingly white parka and with her short, black and blue hair poking out from beneath a slouchy white crochet hat. Tennessee’s not that cold.

She pauses in the circular walkway, tilts her head up until her dark eyes meets mine, then smiles and waves. Feeling myself flush from head to toe at being caught, I wiggle my fingers back at her. Why the hell is she so friendly when she hardly knows me? A moment later, she stops flapping her hand and disappears under the covered wraparound porch. The doorbell rings.

Ah, shit! I should’ve stopped her because of Gram!

Suddenly feeling nauseous at the thought of my grandmother answering the door and having to face down Lucas’s assistant, I speed down the steps. I’m too late. My feet hit the final stair just in time to hear Kylie complimenting Gram on how beautiful the house is. My grandmother’s not giving her accusing looks or asking her politely to leave, so I’m caught off guard. Then I realize that Kylie wasn’t in court yesterday. Gram apparently has never had the chance to meet her, but now that she has, she’s charmed. Kylie’s praise is making her blush hardcore.

Lucas’s assistant’s sugary act is really starting to freak me out.

“Um, Gram, this is Kylie, she’s—” There’s no way I can introduce her as Lucas’s assistant. I shoot Kylie a pleading look.

“A friend from high school,” she effortlessly adds. When Gram looks away for a split second, Kylie winks one of her brown eyes at me. It’s heavily lined in metallic blue liner. “I’m in town before heading off for vacation in a couple days and hooked up with Sienna online.”

My grandmother’s eyebrows draw together, and I can tell she’s trying to place whether she’s ever met Kylie before. I can read the emotions on Gram’s face as she thinks back to graduation and homecoming dances and piano competitions. Coming up with nothing, she lifts her shoulders slightly and shakes her head, her gray hair springing around her face.

“That’s so wonderful you stopped by for Sienna,” Gram tells Kylie. Then she darts her blue eyes up to me, where I’m still standing on the last step, staring at me questioningly. “Did you want me to cook or—”

A lump forms in my throat. I know I shouldn’t but I’m thinking of the Bowling Green, Kentucky, receipt that I’ve folded until there are hundreds of tiny creases lining it. It’s upstairs, tucked under the magazine on my nightstand. I shouldn’t keep it. I should’ve dropped it where I found it.

Because now I feel like a spy and the only thing I’ll do when I see the slip of paper or Gram mentions cooking for me is wonder whether or not she was actually with my mom this afternoon. It’s going to eat away at me until I have the chance to talk to her about it.

No, I’ll have to confront her in an intervention like scenario because my grandmother always clams up when it comes to talking about Mom.

My mother tends to evoke that type of response from everyone.

“You’ve been busy all day, so you should get some rest,” I say, despite the constriction in my throat. “Plus, Kylie’s got this outrageously unlimited expense account for her job and she’s taking me out to dinner to catch up. Isn’t that right, Ky?”

Biting her lip—either to avoid laughing aloud at the emphasis I placed on the word “unlimited” or to keep from telling me to shut the hell up and that her name’s not “Ky”—Kylie gives us a thumbs up, and replies, “She’s right. My boss lets me be a lush, and I take every advantage of it. And we better get going because I’m starving and we have a reservation.”

Then, Kylie takes Gram’s hands in between her gloved ones and offers her a genuine smile. Once again I’m struck, curious as to why she’s being so nice to the old woman her boss wants to evict. “It was so great to meet you, Ms. Previn, and thanks for letting me borrow Sienna for a while. I promise I’ll take good care of her.”

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what my ex-boyfriend said when he picked me up for junior prom, the night he talked me into giving me up my virginity.

I fidget with the short hem of my chocolate-colored boatneck dress.

Gram’s nose wrinkles and crosses her arms over her chest as if she’s in deep thought. At long last, she says, “You girls have a good time. And absolutely no drinking and driving!”

It isn’t until I’m buckling my seatbelt in the Escalade, which smells like cigarettes and too much pine-scented air freshener, that I realize why my grandmother had such a strange expression on her face just before Kylie and I walked out the door.

Gram and I have different last names—hers is Previn and mine is Jensen, my dad’s last name and Mom’s former married name. Not once had Gram mentioned what her last name is to Kylie.