Brandon stared at that drawing for a very long time. The whole room was dead silent. Then he
stood up, slowly, and held the drawing up in the air so Barbara could see it.
“Did you do this?” he asked.
Barbara lifted her chin. She didn’t
even try to deny it. “Yes,” she said. “I corrected it. Because it isn’t
true. I am not that child’s grandmother, and I never will be.”
Brandon straightened. He turned back to Lisa, kneeling again to be level with her.
“Lisa,” he said. “Is this why you asked me that question the other day? About the baby?”
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Because three days earlier, out of absolutely nowhere, Lisa had come to Brandon looking worried and asked him whether he would still love her after we had a baby of our own someday. He’d
told me about it that night, both of us baffled, because we hadn’t been talking about babies, we hadn’t said one word about it around her. We couldn’t figure out where the question had come from. And when we’d gently asked Lisa why she was worried about it, she’d clammed up and
refused to say.
Now, kneeling on the floor in her flower-girl dress, she nodded.
“Barbara said,” Lisa hiccupped, “she said only your real children would be her grandchildren. She
said those are the ones that matter. The real ones.”
