“I need you to stay in here while I talk to my granddaughter,” her mother answered flatly. “Try not to get into a fight with your sister for the few minutes while I’m out of the room.”
Good luck with that, Kim thought with a slight smile that faded when Grandma led them into her bedroom and ordered Tate to close the door.
Kim wasn’t sure she’d ever even been in her grandmother’s room. She took a quick glance around, noting the four-poster bed with a hand-crocheted spread, and the nightstand that held a lamp with a beaded shade, a soft leather bible and a photograph of the grandfather who had died when Betsy was still in high school. A double dresser with an attached mirror sat against the opposite wall, an antique silver dresser set with hand mirror and brush centered precisely on the gleaming surface, along with a bottle of rose-scented face cream.
Grandma moved straight to that dresser, where she opened a drawer and drew out a small cardboard box. She turned and looked at Kim. “Give the baby to Tate for a minute.”
“Um—”
Tate reached out for the sleepy baby and cradled her against his shoulder as if he did so every day. If he felt any hesitation about taking her, he didn’t allow it to show as he nodded slightly toward Kim.
Kim felt her heart beating in her throat when she opened the little box her grandmother pressed into her hands. She had a sick feeling of what she was going to find inside—and she was right.
“I can’t take this, Grandma.”
“It’s the engagement ring your grandfather gave me back in ’54. I can’t wear it anymore because of my arthritis. I want you to have it.”
Kim’s hands were shaking as she closed the lid of the box, hiding the pretty little platinum band with its small, but perfect, round diamond. “You said this ring was to go to one of your grandchildren who was a part of a long, stable marriage. That isn’t me, Grandma.”
“I know you and Tate aren’t much more than newlyweds, but I have a good feeling about this one.” Grandma nodded firmly as she spoke, as if there was no use arguing with her “feelings.”
Kim looked despairingly at Tate. His gaze locked with hers over Daryn’s head, he gave a little shrug, effectively leaving the decision about what to do next entirely up to her.
She drew a deep breath. “Grandma, there’s something I need to tell you. Maybe you should sit down.”
Chapter Seven
Stark silence reigned in Grandma Dyess’s bedroom when Kim finished speaking. Kim sat on the bed beside her grandmother, one hand resting gently on Grandma’s arm. Tate had settled onto a little boutique chair nearby. At any other time, Kim might have found some humor in the sight of him perched precariously on that delicate little chair, cradling her sleeping baby in his strong, tanned arms.
“I’m so sorry, Grandma,” she said when the quiet became too awkward to bear. “I really wasn’t trying to pull anything over on you. But I wanted to see you, and, well…”
“And your mother put you in such an untenable position that you didn’t know what else to do,” Grandma concluded for her, a scowl on her face. “I swear, I don’t know where I went wrong raising that girl. She wouldn’t recognize common sense if it walked up and bit her in the butt.”
Kim heard a faint sound from Tate, but she knew he wouldn’t dare chuckle at that moment.
“I know you’re probably angry with her—and with me, for that matter—but I hope you can forgive us both.”
Her grandmother was still frowning. “Now that I think about it, you haven’t really flat-out lied to me, have you?”
“I tried not to. But by omission, I suppose…”
“For more than a year, whenever she has mentioned you, Betsy has referred to your husband and child. Now I will say, she hasn’t talked about you much. You know Betsy, always more interested in herself than anyone else, even her children. But all this time, she has led her family to believe that you were married. And then she had the nerve to blackmail you into cooperating.”
“It wasn’t blackmail, exactly—”
“Coercion, then. If you wanted to see your ailing grandmother, you had to play along with your mother’s trickery.”
“Well, yes, but—”
Grandma nodded. “I should have taken her behind the woodshed more when she was a child. I blame her father. He spoiled her rotten.”
Kim didn’t quite know what to say to that.
“So.” Grandma looked narrowly at Tate. “Is your name really Tate?”
He did chuckle then. “Yes, ma’am. Tate Price. Not Trey.”
“Good. Always thought Trey was a silly nickname.”