Linda Lael - McKettrick's Pride

Granny was a businesswoman. She had things to do.

All grown-up people did, it seemed to Rianna. All the time.

She washed her hands and headed for the stairs.

Granny would be down there in the kitchen, listening to the radio and waiting for the coffee to brew. Rianna could smell the familiar aroma already, and that made her sad, too. It reminded her of her daddy. The first thing he did, every morning when they were at home on the ranch, was make coffee.

Last night, after Granny had tucked her and Maeve in, listened to their prayers and left the room, Rianna had whispered to her sister that she thought Daddy might come to the party, after all. He had that jet to travel in, didn’t he?

“Forget it,” Maeve had said. “He won’t be there. He’s busy.”

Remembering, Rianna paused on the stairway, doing her McKettrick-best not to cry. She wished she had a mommy, like the other kids at school.

She thought of Echo—Miss Wells, Granny said to call her—with her sparkly smile and pretty hair. It would be a fine thing to have a mother like Miss Wells, driving a pink Barbie car, pulling up in front of the elementary school and waiting to see Rianna and Maeve come out the door. Taping their drawings and arithmetic papers to the front of the fridge.

Rianna’s throat ached, and her eyes burned so bad she couldn’t see for a moment.

“Rianna, honey?” It was Granny, standing at the bottom of the stairs with the newspaper in one hand, looking up at her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

Rianna swallowed hard, summoned up a smile and went the rest of the way down the steps. “I’m seven,” she announced.

Granny smiled, leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Patted her lightly on one shoulder. “You surely are,” she agreed. “You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

“Maeve says I’m a dweeb,” Rianna confided solemnly.

Granny bent a little more and hugged her tight. She smelled of lilacs, just like always. “Don’t you pay too much attention to the things Maeve says,” Granny told her. “She’s growing up, just like you are, and sometimes that’s hard. It makes a person crabby.”

“Was my mommy ever crabby when she was growing up?” Rianna, unlike Maeve, had no memory of her mother. She wished she had, because then there might not have been a big hole opening up in the middle of her chest when she saw moms hugging their little girls, gathering them up like chicks, loading them into minivans.

Granny’s face softened. “Oh, yes,” she answered, and her voice sounded kind of funny, like she’d swallowed something and couldn’t quite get it to go all the way down. “Sometimes she was. Mostly, though, she was happy. She was smart and beautiful, too, just like you and Maeve.”

Rianna had heard those things before, many times, but she never got tired of listening. “How come Daddy isn’t happy?” she asked.

Granny’s face changed again, but it was different from before. It made Rianna wish she hadn’t asked. Maybe Maeve was right. Maybe she asked too many questions. But how else was she supposed to find things out? It wasn’t as if people told a kid anything much—beyond “Brush your teeth” and “Do your homework—” without a lot of prodding.

“He works too hard,” Granny said. “And he misses your mama something fierce.”

“I miss her, too,” Rianna said. Maeve might have mocked her, said she couldn’t miss Mommy because she’d been too young when she died, but Granny seemed to understand.

“She’d want you to have a real happy birthday,” Granny said.

Maeve appeared at the top of the stairs, still in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. She yawned. “Is breakfast ready?”

“I’m seven,” Rianna burst out, unable to contain the stupendous news.

“Big deal,” Maeve said.

“Maeve McKettrick,” Granny scolded, “if you’re going to be snotty, go back to bed.” She turned to Rianna again and smiled. “Meanwhile,” she went on, “there just might be a pile of presents waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Rianna’s spirits rose. She liked presents.

Maeve came grudgingly down the stairs.

“You think you’re a teenager,” Rianna whispered, waiting until Granny went on into the kitchen, to pay Maeve back a little for thinking it wasn’t important to be seven. For one thing, Rianna reasoned, it was the only way to get from six to eight. “Just because you’re getting braces.”

“At least I’m not a baby,” Maeve sniffed. “Like you.”

Rianna clenched her fists at her sides. “I’m not a baby!”

Granny doubled back. She said she had eyes in the back of her head, and sometimes Rianna believed her. Imagined them peering out through the hard-sprayed fluff of hair.

“That will be quite enough,” Granny said. “This is a beautiful day, and we’re all going to be nice to one another.”

There was a big stack of presents by Rianna’s plate, all of them tied up with ribbon, and that took her mind off mean Maeve calling her a baby. She wondered out loud if any of them were from her daddy.

Granny’s mouth pulled in tight again, but only for a second. “He had something sent to the ranch,” she said. “Myrna Terp called me and told me so.”

Mrs. Terp worked at McKettrickCo, and always slipped Maeve and Rianna cookies and hard candy in little twisty wrappers when they visited, while their daddy pretended not to notice.

“I hope it’s a dog,” Rianna said.

“As if,” Maeve said.

“Maeve,” Granny finished.

Maeve rolled her eyes. She did that a lot. Rianna figured one of these days they’d pop right out of her head, like in a cartoon, and roll around on the floor.

“Maybe it’s a mommy,” Rianna said.

“You can’t buy a mother, stupid,” Maeve answered, but at another look from Granny, she bit her lower lip, pulled back a chair at the table and sank into it hard.

“Land sakes, Maeve,” Granny muttered, “I can hardly wait until you’re sixteen.” She didn’t sound like she meant it, though. That was another thing about grown-ups; they were always saying one thing when they meant something else entirely.

Rianna inspected the present on top of the pile. “Can I open it?”

“Eat your breakfast first,” Granny said. She dished up Rianna’s favorite, French toast, with blueberries and whipped cream on top. There was milk, too, and orange juice. Rianna was afraid she’d be eight before she got to open her presents.

After breakfast, she ripped in.

A coloring book.

A small plastic pony with a lavender mane and tail.

“That’s from me,” Maeve said.

There was some Barbie stuff from Granny and, finally, a gold locket in a red velvet box.

Rianna drew in her breath. Maeve had gotten one just like it when she turned ten. Rianna had thought she’d have to wait three more years to be grown up enough to wear anything but plastic pop beads.

Her fingers were shaky as she opened the tiny heart. Her mommy’s picture was inside, and there was one of her daddy, too. Both of them were smiling.

Rianna scrunched up her face, trying to remember the pretty woman in the photo, wishing she’d come to life, like pictures did in the Harry Potter movies, and say, “Happy birthday, Rianna.”

Or maybe, “I love you.”

“You’d better not lose that,” Maeve said.

Granny gave Maeve another look, helped Rianna get the necklace out of the box and fastened it around her neck, even though she was still wearing her pajamas.

The thin gold chain glittered magically as Rianna looked down at it.

Granny sniffled and turned away, standing at the sink for a long time.

“She misses Mom,” Maeve confided in a whisper.

So do I, Rianna wanted to say, but she knew she’d get shot down, so she didn’t.