The Reunion

As far as Skye Devereaux was concerned, eight o’clock in the morning was the ideal time to rise.

It wasn’t so late that she slept through her whole morning, but it also wasn’t painfully early. She didn’t keep regular office hours and got a lot of her work done in the late evening, so she rarely went to bed before midnight. If left to her own devices, she nearly always woke up around eight with enough sleep to feel ready for the day.

Unfortunately, for the past month, she’d been having to get up at six forty-five.

She didn’t like it. She had to set an alarm, which blared at her every morning with a rude insistence that made her grumpy before she’d set her feet on the floor. She wanted her extra hour and fifteen minutes of sleep. It was such a small thing to expect, and the world was brutally unfair for taking it away from her. She’d been getting up early for way too long now, and she was over it.

Over it.

Unfortunately, being mentally ready for her new schedule to be finished didn’t actually alter reality, so on a cloudy Friday morning in September, she slammed her hand down in the general vicinity of her phone and somehow managed to turn off the grating noise that had just broken through a very pleasant dream.

For a moment she was torn between closing her eyes again or doing what she knew she needed to do.

Duty or love or guilt or responsibility won the battle. She heaved herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, pushing back the covers so they wouldn’t tempt her.

She sat there for a minute. She was so short her feet didn’t even reach the old hardwood floor. She sat breathing and clearing her mind until she pictured her grandmother sitting by herself downstairs.

Skye got up. Stuck her feet into her soft red slippers. Grabbed a fuzzy purple bathrobe from the chair where she’d thrown it the day before and tied it on over her tank and cotton pajama pants. Suitably girded for the morning, she left her room and stopped in the hall bathroom before she went downstairs.

At seventeen, Skye had gone to college like the rest of her friends, but she’d never actually landed on a plan for her future. She’d consecutively majored in education, psychology, business, social work, philosophy, and history until she’d finally ended up with a women’s studies degree that allowed her to cobble together a lot of the courses she’d already taken. Since she wasn’t interested in graduate school and she didn’t have any specific skills, she’d had a hard time finding a job after college, finally taking a receptionist job near Azalea, the small town in Virginia where she’d been raised. It had been an uninspiring position, but she’d been fine with it. She’d earned enough to support herself, although not enough to cover her spending habits.

So two years later, when the local business she worked for folded, she’d been left with way too much credit card debt and no job. She’d had to move back home with her parents, which was where she was still living even though the business she’d started with her two best friends a few years ago had become quite profitable.

“Mornin’, Gran!” she said cheerfully as she came downstairs. Her grandmother, as always, was sitting in a rocking chair by a window that looked out into the yard with a good view of the bird feeder.

“Good morning, hon. How’d you sleep?”

“Just fine. I’m getting your tea right now.”

“Thank you. No hurry at all.”

Gran never asked for anything, but Skye knew she’d been waiting for at least a half hour now for her second cup of tea, which she wouldn’t get until Skye got up to make it for her.

Last month, Gran had had knee surgery, and the recovery was slow. She still used a walker to get around, and she had trouble maneuvering a mug of hot tea back to her chair in the mornings. Skye’s mom would get her the first cup before she and Skye’s dad left in the mornings, and Skye would always get Gran her second cup, which was why she’d been getting up at six forty-five for the past month instead of eight.

As she reheated the water in the electric kettle and pulled an English breakfast tea bag out of a box, Skye called, “How are the birds this morning?”

“Well, those feisty male finches got into a knock-down, drag-out fight, but then a red-bellied woodpecker swooped in and scared them away.”

Skye chuckled. “Sounds like the finches deserved it, fighting like that.” She finished the cup of tea with milk and sugar before bringing it into the living room for Gran.

“Thank you, Skye. You know you don’t have to wake up early just to make me another cup of tea.”

“It’s no problem.” Not for the world would Skye let her grandmother know it was a struggle to get up early. “It’s good for me to get up at this time. Gives me an extra hour of the day.”

“If you say so.” Gran’s voice had a knowing edge—a long-tried, dryly amused wisdom that was always underlying her kindness.