Granny Miller was once a spry and bubbly, albeit adorably neurotic and ruthlessly nosy, woman who was devout in her Southern Baptist beliefs. She had always been a devoted wife and mother who was married to the same man for fifty years before his faulty heart finally gave out. Her only daughter had been her whole world, and she had missed Nora Jean terribly ever since her then teenaged daughter had left town.
Nora couldn’t help but notice how badly her mother had aged. She was haggard, wrinkled and hunchbacked as she hobbled about on an old, wooden cane. Her frame was frail and her bones brittle. She moved slowly, plagued by the crippling pain of arthritis. She had traded in her customary housedresses, that had always looked as though they came straight off the set of a 1950’s sitcom, for a tattered pink duster and matching slippers. But, her mind was still sharp, her staunch beliefs unwavering. She was very much set in her ways, and she was as unapologeticly meddlesome as she had always been.
“Jack still lives in town,” Granny said one night as she refilled Nora’s glass of sweet tea.
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that occasionally over the past couple days,” Nora smiled, humored by her mother’s persistence.
“Maybe you should call him?” her mama shrugged, her tone more insistent than suggestive.
Nora stuffed a piece of cornbread in her mouth to avoid responding.
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Nora Jean,” Granny scoffed, “that is no way for a lady to eat.”
“Mama,” Nora grumbled, “I have not seen or spoken to Jack Nelson since I was eighteen years old, so, if it’s not too much to ask, let’s try living in the present.”
“Bless your heart, you’ve done nothing for days but stew over Randy,” Granny said, near tears.
“He’s my husband, Mama,” Nora frowned. “I have to think of him and how we’re gonna save our marriage.”
“Your daddy would roll over in his grave if he knew you planned on going back to that man,” Granny lamented.
Nora stood, angry, despite her best efforts to forgive her mother’s critique. “No, Mama,” she shook her head. “Daddy would understand now just like he understood when I left to be with Randy. It’s you that has always wished I had chosen Jack instead.”
“You wouldn’t have had to travel around,” Granny shook her head. “You could have stayed here and been close to me.”
“And I wouldn’t have my beautiful children,” Nora countered. “I wouldn’t know how amazing and unexpected love can be.”
“And you wouldn’t have a broken heart right now,” Granny frowned.
Over the next day or two, Granny spoke vaguely of Jack, never offering any concrete information. Nora steadfastly refused to fall into her trap, but, truth be told, she was a little curious. She made herself a promise that she would not ask one single question about her former flame; she would not give her mama the satisfaction of knowing that being back in her hometown had caused her to give her first love so much as a second thought.
Being back in her old bedroom didn’t help; it was strangely like she had left it. On her first day in town when she opened her closet door to sit her suitcase inside, she had found an old shoebox, covered in dust. She sat Indian style on the creaky, wooden floor and slowly removed the lid. The memories contained in that box came back so easily she couldn’t believe she had ever blocked them out. She felt silly, sitting on the floor in her childhood bedroom, crying over memories of her high school prom. She was a grandmother for Heaven’s sake! She had been married to the same man for almost forty years! Surely, what she remembered about Jack Nelson added up to nothing more than the idealized dreams of a teenage girl. But, in truth, she knew there was more to it than that. Jack might not have been the man she was meant to spend her life with, but he had been her friend, her very best friend, and the day she packed her bags and ran off with a man she hardly knew, she had not only broken Jack’s heart, but she had lost the only real friend she had in the world.
Nora found Jack’s phone number in her mama’s book; it was the only number written in red, obviously planted there for Nora to find. On more than one occasion, she had even dialed the first couple digits, but, each time, she chickened out and quickly hung up the phone. The way gossip spread through Hope Hull, Nora figured Jack had to know she was in town. He hadn’t tried to contact her, and she was not about to contact him! She didn’t want to talk to Jack Nelson…certainly not now…not now that her life was falling apart! She was in no mood to meet Jack’s wife and hear about the perfect marriage she was somehow sure he had. She was certainly in no mood to tell him that the man she had abruptly left him for was now cheating on her with a woman young enough to be her daughter. No, she never wanted to see Jack Nelson ever again!
Life had been so simple when Nora had known Jack. He had taken her to the prom; he was the first boy she had ever kissed…the only boy other than her husband whom she had ever kissed. Back in high school, Jack played on the basketball team, and Nora went to all his games. She wore his letterman’s jacket; he wrote her sweet letters, detailing their future together, and, junior year, he placed a promise ring on her finger one night in his parents’ barn.
At eighteen, Nora planned of nothing but going off to the University of Tennessee with Jack, graduating, moving back to Hope Hull, getting married and raising a family on the farm. Then, the summer after her high school graduation, as Jack and Nora prepared to head off to school together, Nora’s mama drove her to Memphis to purchase a couple things she would need for her dorm room. It was an innocent, Saturday morning trip to the big city. The most exciting part of the day promised to be picking out a suitable, yet affordable, set of luggage. What Nora couldn’t have known was that the simple trip would alter the entire course of her life.
A flat tire left Nora and her mama stranded on the side of the highway. Nora’s mother had managed to maneuver the car to the side of the road, but neither one of them had the slightest clue how to put on the spare. Just as Nora had resigned herself to the idea that she would spend the majority of her Saturday sitting on the side of the road, a car pulled off behind them, and two young men stepped out. As they approached the car, Nora’s mama quickly locked her door and wagged her finger, ordering Nora to do the same. Preferring anything to the alternative of sitting there any longer, Nora rolled her eyes and stepped out of the car, her hair and her dress blowing in the breeze. Pressing her dress down with an embarrassed giggle and squinting her eyes, Nora thanked the men for stopping to help. The first boy, best described as the less polished of the two, spoke with a familiar accent, and he wasted no time getting to work changing the tire. His friend was incredibly tall and strapping, but, perhaps most notable, was the fact that he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Nora. Polite chit-chit revealed that the two roommates each had one more year of college at West Point, which sounded impressive even if Nora had no idea why. They were home on leave for the summer, and they were spending their vacation at the Memphis home of the boy whose accent and personality had done more to calm Nora’s mama’s fears than the air of mystery surrounding his friend. The other man, the strikingly handsome one with the commanding brown eyes that conveyed a certain attractive confidence, was from Boston. Nora knew nothing about her new friend, the town he came from, or the school he attended, but, when the charming cadet asked her to join him for dinner that night, she accepted before she even remembered she had a boyfriend who was her whole world.
Despite her mama’s guilt trip, Nora kept that evening’s date a secret from Jack, but when Randy Cohen asked her out the next night and the night after that, she knew she had a tough decision to make. And though her life felt like it was spinning out of control, her decision seemed surprisingly simple. She had no doubt about what she had to do, and the day she went to Jack and tearfully explained that she had unexpectedly fallen in love with someone else in only a matter of a few short days, she shattered all their future plans and any semblance of the life she had always imagined.
One week after Randy’s West Point graduation, the girl who had never dreamed of leaving Tennessee married the military man who would take her far away from Hope Hull. Nora had never once wondered how her life would have been different if she and her mother had never had that flat tire, if two gentlemen had not stopped to help, if she had gone away to college with Jack and moved back to Tennessee to raise a family. None of these things had crossed her mind in all the years she had been married to Randy, not even on the nights when she dreamed of nothing but returning to her county home. She had always known that she and Randy were meant to be, and she never desired to give a minute’s worth of thought to what could have been. Until now.
“You just bring that little, disrespectful thing here to stay with his Granny for a day or two, and I’ll have him whipped into proper shape,” Granny Miller declared when the subject of Grant came up.
“I’m sure you would, Mama,” Nora said disinterestedly.
“You don’t believe me?” Granny protested. “I’ll tell you one thing, no child of mine would ever act like he acts.”
Nora massaged her temples, wishing her mama would be content to let the conversation fall by the wayside.
“Did you never spank that child? Is that the problem?” Granny probed.
Nora took a deep, deliberate breath. “No disrespect intended, Mama, but you have spent a grand total of about four days with my youngest son over the course of his seventeen years, so…”
“Well, that certainly was not my choice, Nora Jean!” Granny interrupted. “Not all of us feel comfortable traipsing all over the world, and you’ve never brought the baby to Tennessee to see his Granny.”
“No. I know that,” Nora conceded. “I was only saying that perhaps you could reserve judgment of your grandson until you’ve at least gotten to know him better.”
“You know, back when your daddy was still alive, and he drove us all the way to North Carolina to visit, I always bragged to everyone back here about how well-behaved your children were. David and Eisenhower were just gems.”
“Well,” Nora nodded, “I am certainly not denying that Grant has been a unique challenge, and I’ve done my share of complaining, but I don’t think we should give up on the possibility that this one is just a diamond in the rough.”
Granny slid her daughter a slice of pie. “You can use all the fancy words you want I reckon, Nora Jean. It all boils down to the same thing. Bad! He’s just bad! And I reckon he gets it honest from that rotten daddy of his.”
Nora smiled as the aroma of blueberries wafted toward her nose. “Now, Mama, keep in mind that David and Joanna and Ike and Rachel all have the same rotten daddy.”
“They took after their mama,” Granny scoffed. “That was easy enough to see.”
“Oh please,” Nora shook her head. “Eisenhower was his daddy made over.”
“He was a darling boy,” Granny said defensively.
Nora nodded as she took a bite of pie. “A darling boy who looked and acted just like his father…”
