Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Forty-Seven
Kinsey
Kinsey was packing up what was supposed to be her life in Harbor City two days later—alone, since Morgan had run out of the apartment a minute ago, saying she’d explain soon—when Meemaw’s face popped up on her phone. Taking a deep breath and wiping away the tracks of the latest bout of tears—there was nothing she could do for her red nose and puffy eyes—she swiped the screen, accepting the FaceTime call.
Meemaw brought the phone close enough to her face that Kinsey got a good look up her grandma’s nose. If she’d been in Meemaw’s living room right now, no doubt she’d wrap her fleshy arms around her oldest grandchild and pull her in tight until all Kinsey could smell was Dove soap and warm butter. Home was the last place Kinsey wanted to go right now, but at least she’d be surrounded by family who loved her and believed in her.
“Bless your heart,” Meemaw said before clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You need sweet potato pecan pie.”
“I do.” She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Griff that first time at Wakin’ Bacon that it fixed everything.
Meemaw peered around Kinsey. “So you were serious in that text that you were coming home.”
Kinsey flipped her camera so Meemaw could see the half-filled suitcases open on her bed. “I can’t wait to see y’all again.”
Meemaw’s bark of laugher bounced around the otherwise quiet room, followed by a series of coughs. “Don’t try lying to me; I’ve been able to spot you out on fibs since you were a kid.”
Kinsey swapped the camera back and did her best to look like she hadn’t just been caught in a whopper. “It’s not a lie. I do miss you.”
“I miss you, too, but that’s not the same as saying you can’t wait to come home. You have your dream job in your dream city. That’s a lot to walk away from just because. What’s the real reason?”
She tried to obfuscate, but Meemaw wasn’t having it. She interrupted each time she tried to sugarcoat her humiliation at work and with Griff until Kinsey gave in and just fessed up to it all.
“So the woman who owns the company knows what a slimy toad this boss of yours is,” Meemaw said. “But you don’t want to take this up the chain and fight it?”
“I can’t.” Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. Whatever. It wouldn’t lead to anything beyond her being labeled an industry pariah because Gavin was right, no one would believe her. “I’m the new person in the lab. I’m younger than everyone else. I sound like I sound and people assume I’m dumb because of it.”
Meemaw snorted in that dismissive way only grandmas could do that said both that the person was full of it and still loved. “That doesn’t make a bit of difference here or there; people are gonna think what they’re gonna think. You can’t control that. All you can do is live your life and fight for your dreams.”
“I already sent in my resignation to HR.” And then she’d cried into her pillow that somehow managed to smell like Griff even though he’d never used it.
Her grandma shrugged. “So unsend it.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Not if you don’t try, it doesn’t. I’ve never known you to not go one hundred percent toward what you wanted. Why are you stopping now?”
Kinsey sank down onto her bed in the middle of a pile of folded T-shirts that tumbled over.
Hello, symbolism of my life right now.
She let out a sniffly sigh and said, “It’s just easier.”
“And you’ve always liked the easy way out. Yep. That sounds like the Kinsey Dalton I know,” Meemaw said in that tone that every Southern woman knew sounded sugary sweet but carried an underlying dose of sass. “Graduating from high school at fifteen was easy.”
Meemaw had stayed up late with Kinsey, helping her study for tests and making flashcards. Kinsey had worked her ass off, not so much because she loved learning about Jane Austen and macroeconomics but because she knew what she’d wanted and nothing was going to stand in her way.
“Getting your degree and being at the top of your class in undergrad, that was easy,” her grandma went on.
Kinsey blinked back tears, remembering how many calls she’d had with Meemaw about being in the dorm rooms when she was barely old enough to drive, telling her that everything was fine, even though she was lonely and isolated while everyone in her classes was going out. She’d studied so much because it was the only thing she could do, especially when her Pell Grant barely covered the essentials.
“Going on to grad school, finding your dream job, doing what you love despite the odds stacked against you as a poor kid from rural Virginia with no connections, that was all easy,” Meemaw said. “Yep. When I think Kinsey Dalton, I definitely think of someone who takes the easy route.”
No one could tell a person to pull their head out of their ass quite like a grandma, but that didn’t mean Kinsey was ready to give in quite yet. Anyway, all of this was different. “You don’t understand.”
“Young lady,” Meemaw said in that tone, “I understand exactly. You got so caught up in trying to prove everything to everyone that you forgot to just live your damn life already. Plus, you got your heart broken by a man who is a jerk.”
Kinsey’s chest tightened, and it was all she could do to talk past the emotion clogging her throat. “Griff is not a jerk.”
“Really? He sure sounds like one. Who wants someone who occasionally messes up by trying to protect those he loves?”
She looked up at the ceiling and let out a shaky breath because her grandma wasn’t wrong and part of her knew that. Of course, that didn’t make the fact that Meemaw was going at it with both barrels today any easier to hear.
“What he did was wrong,” Kinsey managed to croak out.
“Sometimes people do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and God knows none of us are perfect.” Meemaw gave her a gap-toothed smile. “Sounds to me like he could have made a mistake out of desperation. Some people think it’s their mission in life to take care of those they love, and sometimes they do that in ridiculous ways. Sometimes they think it’s their mission in life to prove to the whole world they’re not the person everyone thinks they are even if in the end, the only opinion that matters is their own.” Meemaw shot her a don’t-miss-the-goodness-of-the-words-being-said look. “He loves you and he messed up. Do you really want to walk away without giving him the chance to fix it—if he deserves it, that is?”
But that was the catch. “He doesn’t love me.”
Meemaw straight-up cackled. “Are you sure about that?”
Sure, he’d said it once, but that was in the heat of the moment, and he’d never mentioned it since. All he’d done was let her touch his Legos—not a euphemism—cook for her, drop what he had going on to see her, taken her dancing even though she was horrible, and made her feel like she was the only person in the world. And he listened to her. Really listened. Asked questions like her answers were the most important thing he’d hear that day, too.
She gulped as the truth smacked her right in the jaw harder than that guy who’d knocked Griff on his ass when they’d met. “Shit.”
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” Meemaw said with more than a little bit of warning in her tone, “but yes, shit.”
She sat straight up, her heart racing as possible ways this could work out ran through her head at light speed. “I can’t believe I missed that.”
“No one’s a genius about everything. Not even you, sugar,” Meemaw said with a wink. “Now you’ve got to figure out what you’re gonna do about it. Do you love him?”
Kinsey nodded, too excited and panicked and oh-my-God-what-happens-next freaked out to use actual words.
“You’ll figure it out; you always do,” her grandma said. “Love you.”
She was still processing all of what Meemaw said ten minutes after they’d ended the call when the doorbell rang. No doubt Morgan must have forgotten her keys when she’d run out of the penthouse so fast.
The last person Kinsey expected to see was the duo outside the door when she flung it open: Leigh, looking every inch the CEO of a cosmetics company, and Billie, with her always present iPad, stylus at the ready, stood in the hall.
“Hi there,” Leigh said. “I’m so sorry for just arriving on your doorstep without notice.”
“What she means,” Billie said with a grin, “is that you didn’t think you could get away from us that easily, did you?”
Kinsey pressed a hand to her belly, which had flipped, flopped, and sank down to her toes. “I know how it looks, but there’s no way I would have sold secrets.”
“Honey, we know,” Billie said with an eyeroll. “Gavin’s sitting in a dingy room talking to a detective as we speak. How delicious is that?”
Leigh looked like she could barely hold in a triumphant “hell yeah,” but she managed to keep it together. “Could we come inside? We have a lot to discuss, including the fact that I expect to see you back in the lab tomorrow. We have a lot of work to do before launching Le Chardonneret.”
