At this point Raiden’s body started shaking so hard the pew started shaking and people started staring.

I turned to him and hissed under my breath, “Stop laughing,” to which he kept shaking but raised his brows at me.

I gave up on him and turned to Grams.

“We went to the double feature last night, Grams,” I explained on a semi-fib in a low voice, doing this out of the corner of my mouth.

“My recollection, it was a triple,” Raiden muttered. I turned to him and shouted, Shut up! But did it just with my eyes.

Raiden took this in, and of course it made him swallow down an audible grunt of hilarity.

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and asked for forgiveness for a variety of things.

“Mm-hmm,” Grams mumbled noncommittally.

“Shh!” Mrs. McGuillicutty, sitting down from Raiden, shushed us.

Loudly.

So loudly, Pastor Wright’s eyes came to our pew and narrowed, though he didn’t miss a word of his sermon.

I looked at my hands that I was folding in my lap and felt about eight years old.

“Shush yourself, Margaret,” Grams shot back. A Grams, I’ll add, who often acted eight years old, and now was clearly going to be one of those times. “God likes laughter,” she finished.

“Grams, let it go,” I told my lap.

“Some of us are trying to listen,” Mrs. McGuillicutty snapped.

“Then listen and keep your nose outta other people’s business,” Grams returned.

I turned my head and bent into her. “Please, Grams, just let it go.”

Grams settled back on a wiggle, grumbling, “Shushing my granddaughter. Who does she think she is?”

Not one ever to leave the last word, or in all honesty to be nice most of the time, Margaret McGuillicutty didn’t let it go either.

“I’m a churchgoing woman who wants to listen to the sermon,” she retorted to Grams.

I was too exhausted and riding a high of being with Raiden to do anything about it, but I just knew when Grams chose that pew and Mrs. McGuillicutty was in it that we should have found an alternate seating arrangement.

I was right.

Grams leaned across me to say to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “No one’s stopping you but you.”

“And perhaps our choir can have all of your attention as they sing their next hymn,” Pastor Wright suggested into his microphone, but the comment was clearly directed at us since he was staring straight at us. I knew he loved Grams and me (Mrs. McGuillicutty was up for debate), but he didn’t look all that happy.

Raiden lifted an arm and wrapped it around my shoulders. He tucked me tight to his side and dropped his lips to my ear.

“Let ‘em battle it out. You’re just makin’ it worse.”

I clamped my mouth shut and my eyes on the choir.

Grams and Mrs. McGuillicutty exchanged a few more barbs before Grams sat back, muttering, “I love this hymn and no McGuillicutty is gonna make me miss it.”

Thus letting Margaret have the last word with, “Boudreaux, think they own this town.”

Though Grams did get in a, “Humph!”

We successfully made it through the final prayer and communal hymn without incident, but hostilities reengaged after Pastor Wright released us.

“Falling asleep and whispering in church like it was a Boudreaux bedroom and kitchen. Shameful,” Mrs. McGuillicutty remarked loudly to no one, and all in the vicinity looked away like they wished they could whistle.

This, of course, meant Grams said to her, but directed her remark at me. “Need you to get me a cane, child. Not to walk with it, so I can beat Margaret over the head with it.”

Raiden chuckled.

Margaret gasped.

So did I, before I hissed, “Grams, we’re in church!”

She waved her hand in front of her face, “God’s forgiven me for a lot over ninety-eight years, that’s the least of it.”

“We gonna get breakfast or we gonna have a smackdown in pew three?” Raiden asked, sounding amused.

Grams didn’t miss a beat. “Breakfast. Need my vittles to perform a successful smackdown.”

Then she turned and toddled off slowly down the pew.

I leaned around Raiden and said to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGuillicutty.”

“As you should be,” she fired back. “No excuse for rudeness. And falling asleep in church? Appalling.”

I gave my apology, therefore did my duty to good manners. She could be ornery. She had to answer to God for that, not me.

Therefore, I was going to let it go and get out of there.

Raiden had other ideas.

He turned his big, tall frame Margaret McGuillicutty’s way and looked down at her.

“One, Hanna apologized. The right thing to do is accept, not throw it in her face. Two, Miss Mildred can take care of herself and she’s too old to give a damn what you think. Obviously, Hanna cares or she wouldn’t have apologized when she had no need to. Now what you gotta know is, if I’m standing next to her or not and I just hear you were rude to her, I’ll take it as you bein’ rude straight to me and I think most folks in this town know you do not want to be rude to me.”

She stared up at him, lips parted while I processed what he said and the fact that any of this was happening at all.

She snapped her mouth shut to hiss at Raiden like he was twelve, not thirty-two, “Well, I don’t believe it. I’ll be having a word with your mother, Raiden Miller.”

“Have at it. She won’t give a flying mostly because she thinks you’re as foul-tempered and aggravating as everyone else in town,” Raiden fired back.

A couple people heard and tittered, proving him right.

I decided we were both done so I grabbed his hand and yanked him down the pew.

Fortunately, he followed me.

We made it to Grams, then we followed in what felt like suspended motion as she made her slow way out of the church, her snail’s pace hindered further with the need to call a greeting to everyone she knew, which was just plain everyone.

Raiden made a break for it at the doors, mumbling his excuse of, “I’ll go get the Jeep.”

Fortunately, this meant when we got to the end of the walk at the front of the church Raiden was there.

Like we had when we came, I climbed into the back and Raiden held Grams steady at the waist while she latched on with a bony hand. He mostly lifted her into her seat, but in a way where it made it seem like she put her foot to the edge of the door herself.

We were on our way when I decided a debrief was in order.

“I don’t believe that happened,” I remarked.

“Believe it, chère. Margaret has always been a sourpuss. Makes it worse, she had her sights set on your Granddaddy and never got over losin’ him to your Grandma.”

This was news.

And made the whole situation even more unbelievable.

“Seriously?” I asked. “That had to be fifty years ago, and sorry, Grams, but they’ve both passed. Holding a grudge when there’s no one left to hold it against?”

“Lost love, precious,” Grams replied, turning her head to look out the side window. “Stings like a wasp bite that never fades.”

This made me pause for reflection, especially the knowing way Grams said it, but Grams wasn’t done.

“Probably didn’t help, my boy’s beautiful granddaughter sittin’ next to the town hunk. History, in a way, repeating. Salt in the wound.”

My eyes went to the rearview mirror, caught Raiden’s and they rolled.

When they rolled back, his were back on the road but they were smiling.

We hit the Pancake House, all pancakes, all the time, (no kidding, they had nothing but pancakes, sausage and bacon on their menu); a weird restaurant that did booming business about fifteen miles out of town up the foothills. It had a fabulous view and the best pancakes I’d ever eaten. So good Grams and I never went anywhere else for Sunday breakfast, and this continued the tradition of Dad and Mom taking us all there every Sunday up until the Sunday before they moved to a different state.

As usual, the pancakes didn’t disappoint and breakfast was fun. Grams talked through most of it, which meant Raiden and I laughed through most of it, and Raiden didn’t surprise me by being gentlemanly and charming.

We had syrup covered plates and were on our third cup of coffee when Raiden’s jacket chimed. He took his arm from the back of my seat, dug into his suit jacket that he’d slung on the back of his chair, pulled out his phone, looked at it and turned to me.

“Gotta make a call.” His eyes slid to Grams. “Excuse me.” His attention came back to me, his hand came to my jaw and he tilted my face up to touch his mouth to mine.

That felt nice. I liked that he was making a habit of kissing me when he left me, so my lips tipped up against his.

I watched up close as Raiden’s eyes smiled. He let me go, straightened from his chair and walked away.

I watched the show.

“Now, chère, church with the grandmother and word whizzin’ ‘round town about holdin’ hands, all cozied up at Chilton’s, of all places. Good to know early that boy isn’t about half measures. But I’m guessing you’re sparin’ your old biddy of a Grams the details about how you caught the eye of Willow’s most eligible bachelor.”

I looked at her, grinned a little and replied, “I was running late this morning or I would have called to let you know he was coming with us, but yeah, Grams. Raiden and I are seeing each other.”

“Don’t kid a kidder,” she said softly, and my brows drew together at this unexpected reply.

Unfortunately, she explained.