8/23/18

a diary entry

August 23, 2018

Maw Maw sent a text yesterday. It was late, well past 11, and I was surprised she was still up. She wouldn’t have been, were he alive. They’d be wrapped around each other in that king-sized bed with the painting of his childhood home hanging over it.

As a girl, that bed of theirs was delightfully enormous to me. Even before I had the faintest idea about sex, I knew my grandparents had something special. Their love was physical; sensual in a way that a child could intuit as safe and warm. The way she’d sit on his lap and he’d gently caress her backside. The way he’d joke about her voluptuous bosom and she’d giggle like a teenager. They were lovers.

God, I adored them together. We all did.

The text she’d sent was a picture of a double rainbow, taken from her back patio with the fancy smartphone my uncle had insisted she have. I imagined her sitting on the porch swing a few hours prior, searching the skies for a promise — and there it had been. She’d sent me the photo on a whim. She knew nothing of the woes under our roof.

“It’s been a hard day,” I texted back. “Any marriage advice?”

Dots appeared, disappeared, and reappeared on the rectangular screen.

“Few fights were as important as they felt at the time,” she responded. This one is, I thought. “I do have regrets. I miss him so much.”

She’s a kind but unsentimental woman, my Maw Maw; the type of woman who will feed a stray dog for 12 years but never let it into the house. The thought of her alone in that enormous bed in the middle of the night, consumed by sheets, wishing she could smell him one more time, hung heavy on my chest.

I creaked up the stairs, my husband sleeping as I slid into bed and touched the tips of my fingers against his.

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{shifting gears now}

Hi, you.

If you’ve read and maybe not hated one of my books, could I ask a quick favor? Could you leave a review on Goodreads? (or just choose a star rating, if you’re lazy like me.) Simply put, the more reviews a book has, the more organic interest it will garner AND the more the algorithm works in its favor. Take a sec and hit one of the buttons below?

Thank you sincerely!

Shannon