“Oh, please. Don’t be so dramatic. Your father and I talked.” This made me pause from ripping all of my clothes off their hangers. She and my dad never talked. Like, ever.
“We decided that you’re out of control and certainly aren’t acting like an adult. Drinking, doing drugs, and hopping from bed to bed. You barely made it through community college, and you and I both know you don’t have any plans as of right now for continuing on with your education.” She took a deep breath while I remained silent. I really had no idea what to say. I was fuming inside, feeling like I was a ticking time bomb, about to explode any second.
“It’s time for you to get your life together, Adelaide. As of tomorrow, you will no longer live here. You will be boarding a plane at six a.m., so make sure you have all of your things together, I’m not sure when you’ll be returning.”
“Are you serious? You think you can just make these kinds of decisions without even including me when it’s my life?” She just stood there, silently, while I was pretty sure I was going insane. My life was being practically ripped out from underneath my feet and she just stood there, still as a statue, not one emotion crossing her face.
“And where will I be going, Mother? Am I at least privy to that information or is that a surprise as well?”
“North Carolina,” she answered simply before turning on her heel and shutting the door behind her.
Chapter 5
“Oh my, Della McGregor. Is that you?” I smiled when I heard the soft twang as soon I began to grab my luggage off of the rack and turned to see my Grams. She looked almost exactly the same as when I had last seen her, besides a few extra wrinkles.
Her snow-white hair reached just the bottom of her chin, and her deep-green eyes glistened with a youthfulness that I’m sure made others her age jealous. She reminded me a lot of Betty White. A little flighty sometimes but she always managed to make me laugh.
“Hi, Grams.” I hesitantly stepped towards her and she made up for the distance and wrapped her tiny arms around me, smashing me into a tight hug. I had felt guilty for not seeing them since I had left. We had talked on the phone plenty, but I knew that wasn’t the same.
“Well, darling, you just grew up into a beautiful woman since the last time we saw you. And look at how tall you’ve gotten,” she peered up at me and I had to stifle a giggle. She was almost a foot shorter than I was, and today I only had ballet flats on. Normally, I had a pair of heeled boots on or something that added even more to my height.
“Now, I know you at least got that from that son of mine. Everything else seems to come from Lillian.” She pursed her lips together as she studied my face for just a second longer and then began to help me with my luggage.
“Let’s just hope her personality hasn’t rubbed off too,” she muttered ahead of me as she led the way out of the airport. She probably thought that I hadn’t heard her. Even the last time I had seen her, she had been a little hard of hearing and tended to talk loudly because of it.
I began to worry that had happened as we inched closer to the familiar pickup truck that was parked alongside the curb, and my grandpa slowly made his way out of it when he saw us coming. My grandpa was a stern man but also had a soft side to him. And most of the time, that soft side only came out for my grandma and I. I’m sure my behavior as of late had probably disappointed him, and I wasn’t sure how warm his welcome would be.
“Hello Adelaide,” he said in a gruff tone before relieving my grandma of the two bags she had helped bring out. Two words, that was all he said to me in the almost hour drive back to their house from the airport.
It felt a little surreal, and kind of like I was dreaming, being in North Carolina. After my mother had informed me of where I would be going, I had a bit of a breakdown. My room literally looked like a tornado had gone through it by everything I had thrown at the door.
By the time I finally calmed down almost two hours later, I had started to warm up to the idea a bit, even though my mother would never find out about it. This was the fresh start I was looking for. For whatever reason, I couldn’t figure that out on my own, but I knew leaving Connecticut would be for the best.
I had crammed almost every piece of clothing that I owned into my bags and lined them up that morning, looking around my room one last time. I didn’t have any plans for returning here, so it would probably be the last time I saw it.
Of course, my mother hadn’t been there to say goodbye to her only child before shipping me off. And she wondered why my grandparents disliked her so much. They never said anything in front of me since she was my mother, but I was a pretty good people-reader.