She resisted the urge to thunk her forehead against the steering wheel. "I'm pretty sure he couldn't see my face, and I don't plan on enlightening him. You can't either."
"No worries," Katie said. "You're the One Who Shall Not Be Named."
"What?"
"Crap," Katie muttered, accompanied by a sound like maybe she'd just smacked herself in the forehead. "Don't let Olive know that's her nickname."
"Oh my God. Seriously?"
"Don't take it personally," Katie said. "He's got a whole list of things Mom and I can't talk to him about. One is women and/or marriage—all women, not just you."
Olive choked out a laugh. "Wow."
"We're also no longer allowed to ask when he's going to settle down and have kids. But really, he should've made a rule about matchmaking, because Mom's been trying to set him up with every even vaguely single woman she meets."
Olive found her first genuine smile for the day. Here she'd been dreading coming back and having to see Noah, but it sounded as if his hands were full.
"Oh, and you'll be staying with us," Katie said.
"That's sweet," Olive said while thinking hell no. "But I can't put you out at a time like this. Gram's got plenty of room—"
"She's been renting her extra rooms out to supplement her social security checks."
Olive felt her heart squeeze. "What?"
"You didn't know?"
Guilt swamped Olive. Had she been that busy keeping her PR firm afloat that she'd neglected to make sure Gram was okay? They'd always been close, really close, even though Olive hadn't lived here since the summer she'd graduated high school. She'd gone to New York for college. After that, she'd taken a PR grunt job in London. Her boss had been an asshole, but she'd loved the city, loved how different it was from everything she'd ever known. She'd left the job a year ago but had stayed in London to start her own PR firm. She had only two regrets about that, and Katie was one of them. Her grandma was the other. "No, I didn't know she was renting out rooms."
Katie was quiet a moment, as she always was when trying to think about how to say something without being too harsh or blunt. "Maybe she didn't want to worry you," she finally said.
Gram had been a nurse for forty years. She had a pension and her house was paid off. Why would she rent out rooms? "You've got enough going on, I'll get a hotel—"
"No!" Katie lowered her voice. "I need you, Olive."
Katie had been there for her through thick and thin, and there'd been a lot of thin.
"Promise me."
Gah. "I promise. And I'm here," she said, turning into the shared driveway between the Turner house and Gram's.
"Your ETA was 12:32, and it's 12:38," Katie said. "But then again, you did almost hit my brother. That must've added a few minutes to your time."
Olive caught sight of Katie's face pressed up against the window. Next to her stood a shorter mini-Katie—her five-year old son, and Olive's godson—Joey. Her heart warmed at the sight of the house, at seeing Katie and Joey, at everything, including Holmes, the family's twelve-year-old basset hound, snoozing on the porch, big as a hairy kindergartner and snoring loud enough for her to hear from her car.
"Uh-oh," Katie said.
"You know I hate an uh-oh."
Katie sent her a grimace through the window. "Noah just texted that he's almost here. He wasn't supposed to get back from his run until 1:24, which would've given you enough time to see me before going to visit Gram. He must've cut through the woods even though he isn't supposed to jog on uneven turf yet. That's going to set his recovery back."
Olive didn't want to think about how he'd gotten injured in the first place, as it would make her sympathetic toward him. She really needed to hold on to her self-righteous anger in order to stay sane. As she leaped out of the car, her anger turned to anxiety. She had learned it was important to be flexible in life whenever necessary.
