Broken: Secrets in Madison Falls

by Rachel Hanna

  “Grandma,” he said as he hugged her. Bella, who was wiping up some spilled coffee, looked up to see Grant standing there. In utter confusion, she looked at the two of them as if she was watching a tennis match.

  “Grandma?” she asked, looking at Grant.

  “This is my handsome grandson, Bella,” Roslyn said putting her arm around Grant.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked Grant.

  “I thought it’d be more fun this way,” he said with a laugh as Bella lightly punched him in the arm.

  “What brings you down here, Scooter?” Roslyn asked.

  “Grandma, please don’t call me that in front of people. You’re ruining my reputation around here,” he said bumping Roslyn’s shoulder. Bella was still standing there with her mouth agape trying to get her bearings.

  “Why do you call him ‘Scooter’?” Bella asked with a grin on her face.

  “Don’t…” Grant instructed his grandmother to no avail.

  “When he was a baby, he would scoot on his butt all over the place. He was too lazy to crawl, so he scooted until he could walk,” she said, slapping her leg with a laugh.

  “Scooter. I love it,” Bella said, tapping her finger over her bottom lip as if it was a great idea to start calling him by that name.

  “Anyway…” Grant said, trying to change the subject.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Roslyn said, reaching up to pat his head. Bella felt a pang of jealously course through her veins when she saw the interaction between Grant and his grandmother. How she longed for that kind of relationship with anyone in the world. Even though she was close to Lori and Ethan, she’d never really experienced that love between parent and child or grandparent and child. Her mother had loved her, but she was single and working and busy much of the time. She had no grandparents, so she often thought about how wonderful that feeling would have been to watch her grandmother bake cookies or make her a pot of chicken soup when she was sick.

  "So what are you doing here? I thought you were at school," Bella asked.

  "Well, I was, but we have a teacher work day today, and I got finished early. Did you forget about the work day?"

  "I guess I did. Of course, this whole mothering thing is brand-new to me." Bella looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was already ten in the morning. She had come into work later than normal since Roslyn was trying to help her out with Ethan’s suspension situation.

  "No problem, I figured you forgot. I just wanted to come by here and see what time you'd like to eat dinner?" he asked. She had almost forgotten that she’d promised to eat dinner at his house again.

  "How about around six o'clock?" she responded.

  “Sounds good.”

  “Scooter, you’re cooking for Bella?” Roslyn asked, cocking her head a bit.

  “Yes, ma’m. I’m going to show off my culinary skills,” he said with a wink as he kissed Roslyn on top of the head.

  “He was always my best cooking partner, Bella. You and Ethan will be in good hands,” she said, smiling at him as she moved back behind the counter to wait on another customer.

  “I’d better let you get back to work. I know what a bossy little lady she can be,” Grant said, nodding his head in Roslyn’s direction.

  “Yeah, I’d better get back. Thanks for stopping by,” she said, trying to act unaffected by the fact that he had come by just to see if she remembered dinner.

  “See you tonight, bud,” he called out to Ethan who was deeply immersed in a comic book he’d brought from home. Ethan waved with a grin and went right back to reading. “See ya later, Bella,” he said in a husky voice that made her legs quiver.

  “See ya. Oh, and Grant, no more secrets, okay?” she said pointing at him with a forced scowl. He chuckled and nodded as he pushed the glass door open and went to his car. She wasn’t sure what the odd feeling was she had swirling around in her stomach, but she knew he did things to her. Things that she refused to allow. Bella didn’t let people in, because when she did, they hurt her. As far as she was concerned, if you never loved, you never lost. She loved her mother and lost her. She loved her sister and lost her. Loving Ethan was terrifying enough, but she would not put her heart out to any man.

  Chapter 9

  Grant cranked his car, but sat in the parking lot of the coffee shop for a few minutes. What was it about this woman? When he was around her, she made his skin tingle. Maybe he was just getting sick. It was early Fall after all. Wasn’t the flu going around?

  The last time he had thoughts like this about a woman, he ended up making the biggest mistake of his life and marrying her. And even then, he didn’t feel like this. Grant felt an inexplicable force drawing him to Bella. He wanted to take care of her, yet she was a virtual stranger to him. Maybe he was just a nice guy trying to do kind things for a woman who’d lost her sister and was raising someone else’s child. Or maybe he was about to head down into dangerous territory.

  He needed to clear his head and focus on something else, so he pulled out into traffic heading toward the grocery store. Making dinner for Bella and Ethan was making him more excited than he would have imagined.

  ***

  Bella finished her shift around five o’clock and had to rush home to get ready for her dinner with Grant. Sharon had come by and picked up Ethan around three, so she’d have to swing by to get him first. As she rushed through the pre-dinner activities, she started to get excited about their upcoming evening together.

  It wasn’t a date, and she was well aware of that. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been on a real date, anyway. During her adolescent years, she wouldn’t have called what she was doing “dating”. There was a lot of sex but little dating. Having come from the background she did, Bella was always more interested in zoning out than being loved by any guy. She just wanted to tune out her world of abuse, neglect and loneliness more than anything.

  When she became an adult, her focus was on raising Lori and Ethan. Once they were stable, she had to focus on making money any way she could. That’s when sex took on a whole new meaning. It wasn’t about love or attraction or anything of value. It was about money. It was about control. Her thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of her phone, and she recognized Nathan’s number. At that moment, she decided there was no choice anymore. She couldn’t leave Ethan, so she would change her cell phone number and hopefully fade into the background of small town America… out of the clutches of Nathan and his seedy movie business.

  ***

  “Sorry we’re a little late,” she said apologetically as Grant answered the door at ten minutes after six.

  “I’m just glad you guys are here. Come on in,” he said with a smile that eased her. Why did he comfort her so easily? No man had ever brought comfort to her. Not ever.

  Bella and Ethan walked into the house, which was filled with smells that overwhelmed her senses. It smelled like a home should smell.

  “Wow, it smells amazing in here,” she said as she took off her coat and walked into the kitchen. Ethan headed straight for the TV in the living room, which Grant had already set up on the cartoon channel for him.

  “Thank you. I hope the taste lives up to the smell,” he said, raising his eyebrows. Bella walked to the stove and saw country fried steak with gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans and a pan of homemade biscuits. Her eyes almost watered from the smell.

  “From the looks of it, I think it definitely will. I don’t think I’ve ever had a meal that looked like this,” she said with a hint of sadness.

  “Really? Your mom didn’t cook a lot?” he asked. It was an innocent question, but it reminded her of all that she had missed after her mother had died. None of her foster parents had prepared home-cooked meals for her. Home cooking represented love to her. It meant someone cared enough to slave over a hot stove just so she could have a filling meal.

  “My mom died when I was eight,” she finally said. She couldn’t keep hiding the facts about her past from him if they were going
to be friends.

  “Oh, wow, Bella. I’m so sorry,” he said taking a step toward her. She busied her hands with wiping some stray water droplets off his countertop so that she didn’t have to make eye contact.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago,” she said softly. “What about your parents? Are they still together?”

  “My grandmother raised me,” he said.

  “Roslyn?”

  “Yes. My parents were pretty young when they had me and not at all equipped to be parents. My father died in a work accident when I was sixteen. My mother lives in Louisiana, but I don’t really see her much. She wasn’t a big figure in my life.”

  “It must have been wonderful to have Roslyn as your grandmother,” she said with a smile as she sat down on one of his dark wooden bar stools.

  “Sometimes. But don’t let her fool you. That woman is some kind of tough when she wants to be,” he said, smiling as he leaned against the counter.

  “Really? That’s hard to imagine.”

  “I remember once, when I was in high school, I had the bright idea of sneaking out at midnight with a couple of my buddies to go skinny dipping in Lake Walton. So, I climbed out of my second-story bedroom window onto this little section of roof and then down our big oak tree. Jumped in Jimmy Smith’s 1964 Mustang, and off we went. Well, about ten minutes into our skinny dip with the Owen sisters, my grandmother shows up in her pink house coat, slippers and hair curlers with a spotlight. Needless to say, everyone’s parents got a call, and I got grounded for a month!”

  “I’m shocked at you, Mr. Brady! Skinny dipping? How scandalous,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him with a grin. It was the first time she really felt herself easing up and enjoying any man’s company in a very long time. This man didn’t want her to perform for him; he seemed to genuinely want her company.

  “I’ve gotten a lot tamer since then,” he said with chuckle as he started taking plates out of the cabinet. “But, trust me, my grandmother reminds me of that little escapade any chance she gets.”

  “I’ll bet…” Bella said getting up to help him. She found the glasses in his cabinet and started putting ice in each one.

  “You don’t have to do that, Bella. You guys are my guests,” he said, putting his hand over hers on the counter as she set down one of the glasses.

  “I like to earn my keep,” she said. He slowly removed his hand and turned back to the stove as Bella struggled to get her hand to stop shaking. What was it about this man’s touch that was getting to her?

  As the three of them enjoyed dinner together, Bella was struck by how different it felt to be part of a family. Even though there were only three of them sitting at the table, she was overwhelmed with emotion and had to excuse herself for a moment at the end of the meal. Standing in Grant’s hallway bathroom, she allowed a couple of tears to escape her eyes before taking a deep breath and walking back into the hall. Grant was standing there, arms crossed and leaning against the wall.

  “Everything okay? You seemed upset when you got up from the table,” he asked softly so Ethan couldn’t hear.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, trying to force a fake grin as she pushed past him. He grabbed her arm, gently but strongly and pulled her back.

  “I might be a guy, but I’m not stupid, Bella. What’s wrong?” he asked. She looked around as if searching for Ethan. “He’s back watching cartoons. Oblivious.”

  “I’m fine, Grant. One thing you’ll learn about me is that I’m not much on sharing my personal struggles or thoughts or emotions…”

  Little did he know just how closed off Bella was. Maybe it was her abusive past, or maybe it was because she had a crisis of identity while playing porn star Desiree Drake for two years. Her walls were high and strong and usually unbreakable. Why she was allowing her emotions to bubble forward now was beyond her.

  “You should try to open up more, then. People can’t care about you if you don’t let them,” he said, tipping her chin up with his fingers. The gentle touch of his hand almost had her crying again. What was wrong with her anyway? Why was the sweet touch of a real man causing her such angst?

  “Grant, please…” she said quietly. “I’m fine. Can we just continue with our evening?” she asked trying not to make eye contact.

  “Okay. I was just trying to help,” he said. He turned and walked back toward the kitchen, and suddenly her gut wrenched at the thought of him walking away. She’d never cared if any man walked away from her, so why start now?

  “Wait. Grant.” She didn’t know why she was about to open up to him. In her experience, opening up to people was dangerous, but she was going to have to trust him enough with basic information if he was going to be a friend and neighbor, not to mention her nephew’s teacher.

  Grant turned around and stared at her for a moment. “Yes?”

  She pointed toward a room off the hallway, not realizing it was his bedroom until they were inside. As she looked around, she hoped that he wasn’t getting the wrong idea like she was easy or wanted to get him in bed. Then it hit her that anyone on the outside would certainly think she was easy if they knew where she’d been for two years.

  “I’m sorry if I snapped at you. I suppose if we’re going to be friends, then I need to tell you a few things about myself so you can understand my quirky personality traits better,” she said with a half-hearted smile as she sat down on the corner of his soft bed.

  “Okay. Fire away,” he said sitting on a chair across from her.

  “Things were great in my life until one day in elementary school when I was eight years old. That was the day I was told my mother was dead. Lori was six, and our lives were thrown into turmoil immediately. One minute we have our little family, and the next minute I learn that my mother had been wiped out by a drunk driver on Tollison Road.”

  “Tollison Road? You mean over in Clayton Springs?” he asked, furrowing his eyes as he clarified that her mother had been killed just one city over.

  “Yes. A drunken teenage driver hit her and tore our world apart. That’s where we lived back then. Our mother was all we had, and she adored us. We never had a father or any other family, so when she died, we immediately went into foster care.”

  “Oh, wow, Bella. I’m so sorry…” He sounded so anguished when he said it that Bella felt sorry for having told him. The last thing she wanted to do was bring her sordid past into his pristine world; it wasn’t fair to him.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s just that sometimes I really miss not having grown up with a family, and it’s so important to me that Ethan get that experience. Lori was a fantastic mother, and I’m afraid I will be a poor substitute for her. I have no clue what I’m doing. The poor kid has already been suspended from school, for goodness sakes. What kind of role model am I?”

  “That’s not your fault, Bella. It was just the circumstances. And trust me, I plan to keep an eye on things so that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Well, thank you. Anyway, I just got a little emotional out there because I miss my sister and my mother more now that I’m back in this area. When I get that feeling of ‘family’, it brings it all back that I lost so much,” she said, trying not to allow the tears to escape again. Her efforts were fruitless as one stray tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Grant knelt down in front of her and wiped it away with his thumb. His gaze cut through her in a way she’d never felt before. Fear overtook her whole body, but she was determined to sit still.

  “I’m so happy to hear that you feel comfortable here, Bella. You and Ethan are always welcome. You know that, right?” he asked softly as he pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. She wanted to squirm and run from the room, but she decided to push her limits for once.

  “Thanks,” was all she could manage to say. “I really didn’t intend to screw up the evening. I’m so sorry…”

  “Don’t apologize. I’m just glad that you’re opening up to someone. The more you open up, the better Ethan will get through this. He needs to know
that he can come to you, and you have to be willing to show some emotions. It’s okay to be sad or angry or depressed sometimes…” She knew he was right, but letting down her guard and expressing emotions didn’t come naturally to Bella. Weakness meant danger. It meant that someone could turn it on you and take advantage.

  “I’m not so good with emotions, Grant.”

  “I can tell,” he said with a slight smile. “Practice makes perfect. Maybe you can tell me more about your past when you’re ready.”

  Bella thought to herself that there was one part of her past she’d never tell him. Her hope was that no one would ever find out she was Desiree Drake, the online porn vixen who cried every night after work and who drank herself to sleep after sex scenes.

  “Maybe,” she said as she stood up. Grant got to his feet and followed her out of the room and down the hall.