Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“Just checking,” he murmured.
“For?”
“I don’t know, maybe you’re getting bored—looking for something fun.”
Someone.
She heard what Malachi didn’t say.
“I’m too busy for fun,” Gracen replied. “A jog on the boardwalk is the most fun I’m having lately. And even that’s getting old.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Care to make it better?”
Malachi laughed. “We’ll definitely make it better soon.”
“How soon?”
“I’m working on it, Gracen.”
No doubt, that was the most she would get out of Malachi on the topic of returning to the valley. She had not been the one to bring up the idea first over their many phone and text conversations. He did.
Gracen just wasn’t ready to let the idea go.
“Did you already jog the boardwalk?” Malachi asked, then.
Gracen stared across the street to the waiting house with bay windows in the front; all the shades had been pulled, but Delaney’s figure could be seen moving around the kitchen behind the light fabric. Lately, she could only pull Delaney out to jog once in a blue moon. “Yeah, it wasn’t bad. I just got back home.”
Next door, the empty lot taunted her.
Gracen had done well to ignore the sight as she went up one side of town and then down the other. Not even the headphones in her ears and music blasting through the speakers straight to her brain had been enough to keep her from glancing back every so often.
“Did Nader get settled into a new place?” she asked Malachi. The guy had been scarce in town for a while, but that wasn’t uncommon when Malachi mentioned his friend worked a lot.
He sighed, the air cracking through the phone. “Back at his parents’ place, I guess.”
Gracen’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yep. He also won’t answer my fucking phone calls.”
That was even more interesting news.
Or rather, concerning.
“Why?” Gracen asked. “I mean, the fire wasn’t—”
“He’d been living there for a couple of years—out on his own, you know what I mean? The fire happened so fast, maybe he just needs some time to recalibrate everything. Time to figure out what’s going on.”
A fire was traumatic.
That still didn’t explain the man’s lack of contact with someone he apparently considered a good friend.
“Anyway,” Malachi said, “I better let you get back to your night.”
“Even if it’s not very fun?”
Could he hear her pout?
Sometimes, their calls didn’t last as long as she would like.
Malachi always found a way to surprise her. “Call me back when you’re in bed later. I’m sure the two of us can figure something out.”
Chapter 16
The Valleyview manor had become sort of an escape for Gracen. She woke up on Tuesday mornings with something different on her docket, and an interesting workday ahead of her, never failed. It only took a couple of weeks for her to figure out that every Tuesday would be a little different than the last depending on who would be sitting in her chair.
Every senior in the complex had their own story. A whole life they couldn’t wait to tell her about as soon as she wrapped the black smock around their shoulders. It became apparent very fast that she could just as easily leave with a smile on her face as she could with tears in her eyes.
For as many families as she was able to meet and shake hands with when one of the residents sat in the stylist chair, because they just happened to be visiting on the particular Tuesday Gracen worked at the manor pro bono, three times as many saw no one.
Or hadn’t for a very long time.
She couldn’t count the number of elderly who squeezed her hand for extra long—clinging tighter with every passing second—with their smiles and thank yous that felt more genuine than any other she’d received in her lifetime. It wasn’t uncommon for the residents to get little to no visitors, and even thirty minutes, or longer sometimes, in Gracen’s chair was the most excitement to dawn their day ... next to taking a walk outside or across the complex to the rec center.
Gracen tried to keep that in mind every time she entered the manor with her work bag slung over her shoulder. It reminded her to smile wider, even if she was tired that day or just not on her game. She saw her Mimi in every face that greeted her through the manor’s hallways, and so she tried to behave as if they were all her family. Because that was the most she could hope for when it came to her own grandmother, and this place.
They were Mimi’s caretakers.
Practically her family.
The only people there everyday.
She needed and hoped that everyone else who walked through the manor’s front doors treated the residents the same way as her—with the same love and respect. A pipe dream, sure, but Valleyview and the visitors Gracen had met really did seem to put extra care and compassion into their work with the residents.