Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells

by Lisa Cach

  “Grace, darling,” her mother said. “We came for you.”

  Andrew led her to a seat and sat her down, then sat next to Cat on the sofa. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, his face earnest.

  “What exactly is going on here?” Sophia asked. The slight flare to her nostrils was the only evidence that she viewed the group as intruders little better than plague-ridden rodents.

  Cat answered, a defiant challenge in her voice. “This is an intervention, Sophia. You and Declan have done your damage, but we’re here to save the Grace we know and love from disappearing forever.”

  Grace sprang up from her chair. “You can’t be serious! An intervention?” She started to laugh. “What, you think I’ve become a drug addict? Mom? You know me better than that.”

  “No, we don’t suspect drugs,” Cat said, in a tone that suggested it hadn’t been off the plate for discussion. “What we’ve all noticed are the dramatic changes that have been happening to you this summer. Your withdrawal from friends and family, your picking fights with me as if to drive me away—those are both signs of being in an abusive relationship. And you’ve lost too much weight.”

  “You’ve gone from healthy eating habits to bad ones in these last few weeks,” Andrew threw in. “That can be a sign of depression.”

  “Or of having been half starved on your freaking CRON diet!” Grace protested.

  “You used to be a vegetarian,” Cat said. “I hear you’ve been eating lots of meat lately.”

  “So? And how would you know that, anyway?”

  Cat and Andrew exchanged glances. Grace’s jaw dropped. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me? I knew it! I thought I was crazy, suspecting a conspiracy, but I was right.”

  Angry, Grace turned to Professor Joansdatter. Her advisor wore her trademark long scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, and her salt-and-pepper wiry hair pulled back in a low, bushy ponytail. Wooden bangles clacked on her wrist. “What did they tell you that made you think it worth coming down here?” she demanded.

  “It was more what I found in your research notes that concerned me. You haven’t written a word of your dissertation.”

  The heat of embarrassment burned Grace’s cheeks. “You read my notes?” Though the professor had access to her files, Grace hadn’t asked her to look at them. All the details of her sexual encounters with Declan rose to her mind. The bet with Sophia. Her own questioning of whether Women’s Studies was a worthwhile field for her.

  “You seem to have been derailed from what had been a promising thesis. I wanted to be sure you were all right, and not at risk of becoming one of those students who never finishes her dissertation.”

  “That could have waited a few weeks, until I was back in Seattle. You didn’t have to come down here.”

  Joansdatter shrugged and looked a little sheepish. “My partner wanted to see Monterey and Carmel.”

  Grace turned accusing eyes on Andrew. “Why did you arrange this?”

  “You are the most perfect woman I know, when you’re being the real Grace. The Grace I met the first day you arrived here. The Grace you are when Declan O’Brien is nowhere to be found.”

  “You’d rather I was fat and dumpy again?”

  “I’d rather you cared more about social issues than clothes and makeup, and flirting and teasing so much that a man doesn’t know what message you mean to send.”

  The arrow hit home, and she had no defense to offer. She cast a beseeching look to Aunt Sophia, wondering why her aunt had stayed quiet for so long.

  Sophia made a show of looking at her watch. Grace glanced at the ormolu clock ticking on the mantel and realized she had twenty minutes at most before the historic auto race would pass by the end of Sophia’s driveway. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she missed Declan driving past, and he then was in a wreck at the turn south of Sophia’s house. The odds were astronomically against it, yet the seed of fear had been planted and there was no arguing with the irrational certainty that if she was not there to wave to Declan as he went by, he would be distracted and crash.

  “Have you all had your say now?” Sophia asked, sounding bored.

  “No,” Alyson said, coming to stand beside Grace. “I want to know why you’ve done this to Grace. Why did you invite her down here for the summer? You’ve never shown the least interest in our family.”

  “It does appear that way, doesn’t it?” Sophia nodded faintly toward the chair Grace had vacated, and Grace offered her arm to her aunt and led her to it, watching with concern as Sophia settled into it with a twinge of pain.

  “The truth,” Sophia said, “may not be something you’re prepared to hear.”

  Alyson crossed her arms, looking suspicious but intrigued. The others stirred, curiosity bright in their eyes.

  Grace looked in puzzlement at her great-aunt. “I’m here because you need a hip replacement, aren’t I?”

  Sophia shuddered delicately. “Grace, that term.”

  “Sorry. ‘Procedure.’”

  “I’m afraid that while true, that was the least of my reasons. You see, dear Grace, you are not my grandniece at all. Nor is Alyson my niece.”

  “I’m not?” Grace and her mother said in unison, as breaths of surprise were sucked in around the room.

  Sophia shook her head, and left them hanging for several long moments. “No, you’re not. You, dear Grace, are my great-granddaughter.”

  Grace sank in shock to the arm of the sofa, staring with an open mouth at Sophia. “No way.”

  Alyson shook her head. “That can’t be. My mother, Lucy, was your sister. Grandmother said she came very late in life, a surprise, but …”

  “Did you never question why my mother should have given birth at age forty-six, in that era? I’m seventeen years older than Lucy. I was pregnant at sixteen, and gave birth at seventeen.”

  “Why the lie, all these years?” Alyson asked.

  “I was obviously not going to raise the child. Pretending the child was my mother’s was what families did in those days, if the child wasn’t given away entirely.”

  “But … who was Lucy’s father? Where was he?”

  Amusement teased at Sophia’s mouth. “He was long gone by the time I discovered I carried his child. He wouldn’t have made much of a father, anyway.”

  “Who was he?” Grace asked, as stunned and curious as her mother. Sophia was her great-grandmother! She was a direct descendant of this woman who had loomed so large in her life these past months. No wonder they looked so much alike. No wonder Sophia had been so interested in her.

  “Your great-grandfather was a lion tamer.”

  Grace laughed, startled. “What?”

  “With the circus.”

  Grace’s mother sat down. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Sophia smiled faintly. “You can imagine the romantic figure such a man would present to a sixteen-year-old girl with a hunger for adventure. It was like sleeping with Tarzan.”

  “You didn’t try to find him when you found out you were pregnant?” Grace asked.

  “What was the point? I didn’t want to raise children in a traveling circus. I had bigger dreams.”

  “So you abandoned my mother and went to Hollywood,” Alyson said.

  “It wasn’t quite as easy as that. It was a difficult birth, and afterward the doctor warned me that I might never be able to carry another child to term. Leaving Lucy was not easy. It was better for her, though, to grow up with a family, and without the stigma of being a bastard; the times were different then, you know. Once I left, the thought of seeing her or hearing of her was too painful. I resolved never to look back.”

  “But you did look back,” Grace said. “That Easter when you came to Connecticut.”

  “I wanted to see what had become of Lucy, and I wanted to meet you, Alyson. You weren’t what I expected.”

  Alyson scowled.

  “You probably always wondered where you got your amber eyes. They’re from the lion tamer.”

&nb
sp; Alyson crossed her arms over her chest, although Grace could tell that she was intrigued. “Did he even have a name?”

  “He went by Gregori, and spoke with a Russian accent. I suspect he may have been no more Russian than a house cat, though.” Sophia’s gaze softened. “I can see his face in yours, even now.”

  “A lion tamer,” Alyson muttered, still disbelieving but now with a trace of wonder.

  “But it was Grace who threw me off that Easter,” Sophia went on, and her eyes misted, pain pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I saw myself in her, as I had never seen myself in anyone else before. She reminded me of all I had lost and all I had never had. I came back home sorry that I’d ever gone to Connecticut. I regretted looking back.

  “But then, this past Christmas, I received that letter from Grace, and the photo. Here she was, on my coast, struggling to find her way in the world. Her face showed my features, but her life showed that she didn’t know who she was.”

  “She’s not you,” Cat spoke up. “Her face doesn’t make her you.”

  “But it shows that my blood runs in her veins. How much else of me had she inherited without knowing? What potential lay hidden inside her? What doors could she open for herself, if she discovered and utilized it? It could only help her to find out.” Sophia glanced at the mantel.

  Grace followed her gaze to the clock, and tensed at what she saw. Crap! The cars would be passing the end of the driveway any minute now. She stood up, anxious to go, but torn by the intrigue of what was unfolding before her.

  “You didn’t want to help Grace,” Cat said. “You wanted to create a clone of yourself.”

  Grace did a double take, distracted by her friend’s words. “Is that what you think I am?”

  “You look like one, don’t you? And lately you’ve sounded like one.”

  “I know who I am,” Grace said, then caught Professor Joansdatter’s wry look. Grace remembered the things she’d said in her research notes, full of questions about who, at heart, she was meant to be, and how she seemed to be so easily influenced by her surroundings. “Or at least I know as much as any of us do,” she amended.

  “The rest of us haven’t rejected our friends, drastically altered our appearance, or changed our values in the space of three months.”

  “I haven’t changed my values.” Her eyes went again to the clock, impatient. She didn’t need yet another argument with Cat. She had more important things to do.

  “Oh, really?”

  “I’ve just explored contrasting viewpoints.”

  Cat barked out a laugh. “Is that what you call it?”

  “Yes, I do. Listen, can this wait? The auto race is about to pass by, and I’ve got to be there.” Was she imagining it, or did she already hear the roar of motors?

  “No, it can’t wait!” Cat screeched in disbelief as Grace moved toward the door. “You want to interrupt your intervention for an auto race?”

  “I never asked for a lousy intervention!” Grace called over her shoulder, on the move.

  “And they are historic autos,” she heard Sophia placidly explain behind her. “It would really be a shame to miss it.”

  Grace ran across the foyer and out into the sunshine. She did hear motors; they were going by already! She was missing it! Declan wasn’t going to see her. Then he’d crash and die, and it would somehow be her fault, and life would be dark and haunted forever after.

  She took off at a run up the driveway, her flat-soled leather sandals slipping on the asphalt. Through the forest of pine and cypress, she caught glimpses of color whizzing by on the road up above. No, no, no!

  The MG was marine blue. She saw green go by, and white. Just as she reached the end of the driveway she saw a flash of blue, and then the back of an MG, its driver wearing a helmet. Grace jumped up and down, waving her arms, yelling, “Go, Declan! Go!”

  Had he seen her? Did he check his rearview mirror? Did he know she was there?

  The car disappeared around the beginning of the dangerous bend. Moments passed, and a maroon car zipped by, then a yellow. Andrew, and then Cat and Alyson, caught up to her. Grace noticed for the first time that there were other neighbors at the ends of their driveways, groups of friends, people holding drinks and laughing.

  From somewhere around the curve came a low cry of horror from the throats of onlookers, and then deep in Grace’s chest she felt a thud of sound. The cry of horror turned into a chaotic jumble of shouts, and piercing it all was a woman screaming.

  Grace’s stomach dropped. For a moment she saw stars at the edges of her vision. It couldn’t have happened. That couldn’t be Declan—

  She began to run. She heard a shout behind her, Andrew, telling Cat to fetch his medical bag from his car. Andrew kept pace at her side as they ran down the road and around the bend.

  A marine blue MG was smashed into a wall of hay bales. People were massed around the car, and between their bodies Grace caught glimpses of a figure lying on the ground.

  A thousand possible futures with Declan died inside her as she approached, her breath catching on sobs of fear. It can’t be over already; we weren’t finished; there were things unsaid between us, her heart wept.

  If he was dead, she would be haunted by the unfulfilled promise of this summer with Declan for the rest of her life.

  Andrew pushed past the people, Grace following in his wake. When the last of the onlookers stepped aside, Grace looked down.

  And saw a stranger.

  Every joint in her body went liquid in relief.

  Andrew knelt down beside the man and began examining him with cool professionalism. He snapped questions to the crowd about what had happened, how the driver had behaved, how he’d ended up on the ground. As the answers came, the man stirred and his eyelids fluttered open. The sound of sirens approached.

  Cat arrived with Andrew’s medical bag at the same time the ambulance did. Grace stepped back with the rest of the crowd, letting the EMTs and Andrew do their work. Andrew summarized for the EMTs what he’d learned from the onlookers, and what his own examination suggested. As she watched him, Grace felt a new respect for Andrew. He was a truly good man. A man to count on in a crisis, who had devoted his life to helping others.

  Her gaze flicked back and forth between the man she’d thought was Declan and the doctor who tended him—the man who thrived on adrenaline and lived to feed his own pleasures, and the one who healed the wounds such carelessness could cause; the man you’d sleep with, and the one you’d marry and have children with.

  The one who’d steal your heart and carry it to the moon, and the one who’d catch and heal it when it fell back to earth.

  With the driver safely in the care of the paramedics, Andrew returned to Grace and the others and they walked back to the house, Andrew answering Cat’s and Alyson’s questions.

  “They said it looked like he started to pass out just as he came to the corner. He hit the bales and then opened the car door and tumbled to the ground.”

  “Drugs?” Alyson asked.

  Andrew shook his head and ran through the possible diagnoses.

  Grace heard with only half an ear. Her heart had died when she thought it was Declan on the ground, but it had risen again while she watched Andrew. She could live her life chasing after a man who offered nothing but heartache, or she could turn her affections toward a man who had made it his life’s work to help others. She could be with someone who had his own best interests at heart, or someone who had her best interests at heart. It was all so clear.

  And yet …

  And yet.

  They reached the courtyard and Andrew went to put his bag in his car as the others headed back into the house. “Grace, a moment?” he said, catching her hand as she went by.

  She nodded and waited while he put his bag away.

  He shut the car door, turned around, and took both her hands in his own. “Grace, I’m sorry if it seems like I went behind your back in talking to Cat. Please believe that I only did it out of
concern for you. I’ve been watching all summer as a transformation seems to have been coming over you, and while there have been some advantages—like your weight loss—I’ve also seen some behaviors that concerned me. I was losing sight of that principled, opinionated, intelligent woman I first met. I thought that you might be losing sight of her, too.”

  Grace bit her lip, a sense of shame rising within her. She had betrayed herself, to such a degree that the woman Andrew spoke of seemed a dream from a different life. “Maybe,” she admitted.

  “Relationships are supposed to make us better people, not worse.”

  She felt her cheeks heat and tears sting her eyes. She’d known that, once upon a time.

  “I thought he had corrupted you completely. But then today, at the Lodge, when you kissed me …”

  Grace ducked her face, embarrassed..

  “I felt such passion in you, Grace. Passion for me. It was as if you were crying out to me to save you, and I realized that you’d been asking that of me all along, and I’d been too scared and blind to see it. It woke me up, and laid to rest the doubts that had been lingering in my mind. Grace,” he said, and dropped down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”

  CHAPTER

  24

  Grace stood on the balcony of her bedroom, staring out over the dark gardens and the moonlit sea beyond. She was trying to find a space of calm amidst the tumult of her mind and emotions.

  She’d sent Andrew home with a promise that he would have her answer tomorrow. “The intervention, the crash, Sophia … ,” she had said. “I can’t think straight.”

  He’d been apologetic and solicitous, and until he left an hour later he doted on her like a mother with a sick child, while Grace cringed under his care, feeling undeserving of the attention and affection.

  Sophia, meanwhile, had managed to convince Alyson and Professor Joansdatter that every big bad tale they’d heard about her was a misunderstanding, and she was actually a softhearted, lonely old woman who wanted only the best for her long-lost family. Guest rooms were made up, and even Professor Joansdatter and her partner—her husband, Gary, although she always used the gender-neutral term “partner” for him—found themselves ensconced in a room. Sophia had made sure that Grace kept her own room private, though.