“Stop acting poor.”
That’s what my brother’s fiancée said to my grandmother at seven o’clock in the morning on her wedding day.
My grandmother was standing in her own kitchen in her housecoat and slippers, next to the most beautiful cake I had ever seen in my life. A cake she’d spent three days making with her own two hands. With her own money.
And Ashley laughed in her face.
I want to tell you what I did about it. But first, I need to tell you about my grandmother. Because if you don’t know who she is, you won’t understand why what Ashley did was so unforgivable.
My grandmother’s name is Rose. She’s seventy-three years old.
She’s about five feet tall, with soft white hair she sets in curlers every Sunday night, and hands that are always a little dusty with flour. She wears an apron over everything. Even her church dress. She has a laugh that sounds like a teakettle starting to whistle, and she smells like vanilla and butter and the lavender lotion she’s been using since 1974.
