Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Twenty-One
Kinsey
Three days of post-date second-guessing, two days of eight-hour shifts with Gavin the boss from hell patronizing her while staring at her not-exposed tits, and one painful walk home with a blister on the back of her heel because the rumors were not wrong that in Harbor City, folks walk everywhere, Kinsey needed a slice of sweet potato pie and a small glass from the it’s-not-water pitcher. Unfortunately, none of that was available via Uber Eats from Virginia. So she went for the next best—or was it better?—option and FaceTimed Meemaw.
Tucked into the oversize chair in her room, the last orange rays from sunset coming in through the huge windows overlooking the park, she watched her screen go from her saved photo of Meemaw to her grandma’s kitchen ceiling and then—finally—to Meemaw, at least from the eyebrows up.
“Sugar bee,” Meemaw said, her eyebrows going high into her deep-lined forehead as she readjusted the angle so that her whole face was on-screen. “I was beginning to think that city had eaten you up.”
“It’s only been a few days,” Kinsey said as she curled and uncurled her toes in the plush carpet. One too many times of watching Die Hard at Christmas had taught her that, plus how to say shoot the window in German.
“Well, can you blame an old woman for missing you?”
Ah. Grandma guilt. Sure, it was sandwiched between two Texas-toast-size slices of love, but the shiv was still buried right there in the middle like a two-shot revolver in a hollowed-out book on landscape gardening.
“You still have Lark and Beau.” Kinsey’s older brother and sister had stayed close to home as part of an unspoken pact to watch out for Meemaw, who was too stubborn to move into town or let them hire someone to help keep up the property.
“Believe me, neither they nor the interfering repair folks they keep sending out here are gonna let me forget it.”
“Meemaw, you need the help,” she said, playing her part in the never-ending argument. “Plus, you love Beau and Lark and you know it.”
“More than honey on buttered biscuits.” Meemaw let out a raspy cackle of a chuckle before peering close enough at her phone screen that all Kinsey could see of her was her eye and part of a nostril. “So how are you and what happened?”
Shit. How did the woman always know?
“Fine, and what makes you think something happened?”
“Like you said, it’s only been a few days since we talked, and you’d rather text than use a phone for its actual purpose.” Meemaw leaned back so her entire face was on the screen again and harrumphed. “Fess up.”
So that’s when she filled Meemaw in on her passive-aggressive jerk of a boss, the studio apartment with the toilet in the middle of the kitchen, and the great dinner she had at Montclair’s.
“Who did you go to dinner with?”
It took everything she had to keep her face neutral. There was definitely a downside to FaceTiming with Meemaw. The woman never missed a thing. “A friend. Well, sort of a friend. It was Morgan’s brother. He has a bet going with his cousins, and I’m helping him out.”
Meemaw grinned at her, obviously reading the novel that was between the lines. “So does this mean you’ve finally put all that Todd nonsense behind you?”
Telling her about Todd had happened during a moment of weakness and peach cobbler served with a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream. She didn’t regret it exactly, but admitting out loud what she’d done had made her sink down in her chair and do everything but make eye contact with the one woman she knew would love her no matter what but she never wanted to disappoint. And now she had to do it again.
Great.
She sank down in her chair so now only her eyebrows and forehead were showing. “Not exactly.”
Meemaw squashed her lips together in obvious dissatisfaction. “Kinsey Anne Dalton.”
Kinsey let her head fall against the back of the chair with a thump. “I know.”
“Do you? Because it seems like you should, but then you keep up with the ridiculousness.”
Knowing she was a grown-ass woman but feeling like a little kid holding an uncapped Sharpie and a whole lotta unauthorized art on a previously pristine white wall, Kinsey forced herself to sit up, straighten her shoulders, and look her grandma in the eyes. Okay, kinda. She looked at the one corkscrew curly hair that had escaped Meemaw’s braid to brush against her cheek.
She let out a breath and then launched into the speech she had started to give herself when the weight of the lie got F-150 heavy. “Remember what it was like at my internship? People took one look at me and figured I was too dumb to be there on my merits. That led to the rumor that I’d slept my way into the lab, and then it just got worse. After I invented Todd, it got easier. Now I have the chance to really show people what I can do without them thinking I’m just a dumb blonde who sounds like she fell off the sweet potato truck.”
An anxious energy had every muscle tensed, and she bounded out of the chair and started pacing the length of the massive window, no longer seeing the gorgeous park below. Now she saw the judgy looks of the people who with one glance at her figured her for being out of her intellectual depth.
“I just have to pay my dues at work, get them to see my brain and not this person who is so much younger than everyone else and they take me seriously—then I can kill off Todd. A month. That should do it. It’ll be easy. No problem.” Was she trying to convince herself or Meemaw? She had no clue. “It’s the final countdown,” she said, her tone firm. “Todd has got to die.”
“Well,” Meemaw said, her rasp coming in strong. “That seems extreme.”
Despite it all, Kinsey laughed at her grandma’s trademark dry sense of humor. “Okay, he’ll break up with me.”
Meemaw’s eyes rounded, and she let out an angry huff. “Who would ever do that? You’re better than melted butter on grits.”
Now she was giggling like she was twelve at a slumber party hyped up on Mountain Dew and Pixy Stix. “You realize we’re talking about someone who doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t care—even fake people would love you.”
The vote of confidence hit her right in the chest, warming her whole body. “Thanks, Meemaw.”
“You got it, baby girl, but now I’ve gotta go.” The phone screen went back to showing the ceiling of Meemaw’s house as she walked from the kitchen to the front door. “Eunice is here to take me to bingo.”
That meant nothing but trouble for Mr. Fairbanks, who had been the volunteer fire department’s fundraising bingo caller for as long as Kinsey could remember—which was exactly how long Meemaw and Miss Eunice had been heckling him for calling out bad numbers.
That, sad to say, was Mr. Fairbanks’s problem to deal with. Kinsey had her own. How to kill off—fine, how to break up with—an almost fiancé?
