Page 57 of More Than This Land

Luke’s shoulders adjusted. He tipped his chin in what passed for a polite nod. She returned the gesture. The low hum of buzzing filled her ears.

Agnes poked her in the arm. “Seems you know the answer to your own problem. Just being stubborn.”

“It’s complicated.” She’d told herself that so many times it came out on its own.

“Always is, honey. Love always is.”

Love? No.

No one ever said anything about love. She might have thought it once or twice. Or a few hundred times.

Luke was the kind of man who loved with his whole heart. The kind of love she’d always dreamed of but also tried to say she didn’t want. Luke moved toward the food tables, and she pushed away from Agnes’s table. Her face flushed when Luke immediately glanced her way, and she bolted for the kitchen.

Noises in the fellowship hall carried on around them with cheerful indifference.

An hour and a half later, the only people left were the ones who’d been here to pull it all together in the first place. Claire was folding tablecloths with Margot when Ruth appeared at her elbow.

“Can I ask you something?” Ruth picked up the other end of a tablecloth, and Margot made some excuse about checking the soups before scurrying away.

“You’re going to anyway.” Claire brought her end forward.

Ruth laughed under her breath. “Have you thought about staying?”

Claire creased the fold. “I’m not sure why it matters.” Luke’s mother might have sensed what was going on between them, but Claire couldn’t let it distract her.

The tablecloth landed on the stack. Claire smoothed the top one flat and kept her hand there.

“Covenant Creek isn’t just a place to me anymore. It’s people. It’s Mae, and Agnes, and you, and the community dinners, and the hospitality work, and—” She stopped. Her hand spasmed on the folded linen.

“And?” Ruth prompted so gently Claire almost missed the single word.

She shook her head. Ruth folded the next tablecloth without comment, and they finished putting everything away in silence.

Her phone rang half an hour later, Granny Mama’s number flashing on the screen. Claire answered so fast she missed the button and had to go back and swipe it again.

“I’m fine.” Granny Mama’s voice came through before Claire could speak, the preemptive reassurance of someone who knew they’d caused alarm and attempted to hold it at bay. “Don’t drive fast. I just got a little dizzy getting up from the couch. I’m sitting down and I’m perfectly fine. Only reason I’m calling you is because the doctor told me to.”

“I’m four minutes away.” Despite Granny Mama’s reassurance, her foot pressed harder on the gas. “Don’t move. Stay on the phone with me.” They didn’t talk, but hearing the steady breaths kept her from straight panic.

Granny Mama was on the couch when Claire came through the door, upright and alert and holding a glass of water. She looked unaffected, with normal skin tone and a firm grip when Claire took her pulse.

“Pulse is fine.” Granny Mama drank her water and sighed. “Blood pressure monitor is in the bathroom cabinet. Might as well check that too. I know you want to.”

It was fine. All of it was fine. One-eighteen over seventy-four, which her doctor would call excellent. Granny Mama had stood up too quickly, her body had overcorrected, and the dizziness had lasted mere seconds before passing. A non-event.

So why did her hands shake so much and her lungs tremble with every breath?

She sat on the coffee table across from her grandmother, the blood pressure cuff still in her hands, and tried to regulate the adrenaline flooding her system.

“Claire.” Granny Mama patted her hand. “I’m all right.”

“I know you are.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

Because this was why she’d come back. The dizzy spells and the doctor appointments and the medication schedules were the whole reason she’d uprooted in the first place.

How could she even think about leaving when Granny Mama continued having these spells? Granny Mama was all she had left.