Debbie Macomber - Blossom Street

“You’re going,” Andrew echoed.

Apparently their roles had reversed, although this was news to Bethanne. It must’ve happened while she wasn’t paying attention.

COURTNEY PULANSKI

In Courtney’s opinion, this entire plan of her father’s was ridiculous and unfair. Okay, so she’d gotten into some minor trouble talking back to her teachers and letting her grades drop. It could’ve been a whole lot worse—like if the police ever found out who’d started that Dumpster fire four years ago. Who could blame her, though? Her mother had just died and Courtney was lost, angry, confused. She was doing better—not that she was over it. She’d never get “over it,” despite what her more clueless friends suggested. But in time she’d straightened herself out and worked hard to salvage her high-school years and now this. This!

Her senior year of high school would be spent with her Grandma Pulanski in Seattle. While the kids she’d grown up with all her life graduated together, she’d be stuck halfway across the country. Courtney loved her grandmother, but she couldn’t imagine living with her for an entire year.

There was no one else. No other place for Courtney to go while her father was in Brazil working as an engineer on a bridge-building project. Where he was going wasn’t safe for a teenage girl, or so he insisted.

Jason, her oldest brother, was in graduate school and had a job teaching summer classes. Her sister, Julianna, was a college junior; she was working, too, at a vacation lodge in Alaska. Courtney was the youngest. College expenses for her brother and sister kept adding up. Plain and simple, her father needed the money; otherwise, he would’ve waited until Courtney had graduated from high school. Except that when she did, there wouldn’t be much likelihood of getting a scholarship. Unfortunately her grades weren’t the greatest and her chances of receiving an enter-college-free card were about the same as winning the lottery. In other words, her dad would be stuck paying for her, too. Spending the year in Seattle was the obvious solution.

Everything would’ve been different if her mother hadn’t died in that freak car accident. It’d happened four years ago and still felt like yesterday.

“Courtney,” her grandmother called from the foot of the stairs. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, Grandma.” There was no way she could sleep in with the television blaring at five o’clock in the morning. Her grandmother needed hearing aids but refused to believe it. Everyone mumbled, according to Vera Pulanski. Everyone in the whole world!

“I have breakfast cooking,” her grandmother shouted.

Courtney stared up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

She’d been with her grandmother for exactly a week and this was the seventh day in a row that they’d had this same conversation.

“I’ll eat something later,” Courtney promised. The thought of dry scrambled eggs made her want to gag, but that was how her grandmother cooked them. She had all these ideas from television about what was good for a teenager and what wasn’t. Apparently, the only way to prepare anything safely was to cook the hell out of it. As a result, her grandmother’s scrambled eggs tasted like rubber. Not that she’d ever eaten rubber, but she was convinced these would qualify.

“I hate to throw food away.”

“I’m sorry, Grandma.” With all the meals she’d skipped since she arrived, Courtney figured she should’ve lost weight. She hadn’t. The scale had glared accusingly up at her that very morning. Fresh from the shower and completely naked, she’d stepped onto the bathroom scale, a relic if there ever was one. She’d closed her eyes, then peered down at the numbers and those ridiculously tiny lines between them. Her grandmother didn’t seem to know about digital. Not only hadn’t Courtney lost weight, but it looked as if she’d gone up a pound. She wanted to weep. Starting a new school would be bad enough, but facing strangers while she was fat was even worse.

“Courtney?” Again her grandmother yelled at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, Grandma.” Vera obviously wasn’t backing off this morning.

“I’m going out for a while. I need to run a few errands.”

“Okay, Grandma.”

“I want you to come with me.”

Sighing heavily, Courtney sat up, thumped her feet onto the floor and let her shoulders slump forward. “Can I stay here?” she pleaded. After her shower, she’d put her pajamas back on, since she couldn’t think of a reason to get dressed. Not a good reason, anyway.

“I’d really like it if you joined me. You spend far too much time in your room.”

“All right, Grandma.”

“What did you say?”

Rising slowly, Courtney went over to the doorway and shouted, “I’ll be right down.”

Smiling, her grandmother nodded. “Good.”

Vera Pulanski was a wonderful woman and Courtney had always enjoyed her visits to Chicago. But this was different. She’d never had to live with someone this old before. Everything in the house would sell as an antique on eBay.

With a decided lack of enthusiasm, she pulled on her jeans and an oversize black T-shirt that had her dad’s company logo on the front. When she’d walked down the stairs Vera smiled sweetly and stopped her on the last step. Raising her arms, her grandmother cupped Courtney’s face as she studied her.

“You’re a beautiful girl.”

Courtney responded with a weak smile.

“You’re the apple of my eye, my youngest grandchild.”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“I’ve always regretted that Ralph didn’t live long enough to know you.”

Her grandfather had died when Courtney was a few months old. “Me, too.”

“Now, what I’m about to say is only because I love you.”

Courtney bristled, bracing herself for another lecture. “Grandma, please, I know I need to lose weight. You don’t have to say it, all right?” Courtney couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of her voice. It wasn’t as if she could avoid looking in mirrors. She was overweight and well aware of it. The weight gain had happened after her mother’s death; until then, she’d been a size ten and suddenly, poof —she’d blown up into a sixteen. The thing Courtney resented most was being reminded of it by all those well-meaning folks who assumed it was easy to drop thirty-five pounds.

“Actually, that wasn’t what I wanted to say.” Her grandmother released Courtney’s face. “I think you need friends.”

“So do I.” She missed Chicago so much, she could cry just remembering everything and everyone she’d left behind. Even her house, which had been rented out for the year.

“You aren’t going to meet anyone holed up in your room, sweetheart,” her grandmother said gently. “You need to get out more.”

Courtney didn’t have a single argument. She lowered her eyes. “I know.”

“Come with me and I’ll introduce you around.”

She opened her mouth to object, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. Her grandmother caught her by the hand and dragged Courtney toward the kitchen. The scrambled eggs were on the table and Courtney could’ve sworn they were the same eggs her grandmother had cooked the day before.

“I thought we’d go to the library and then the grocery store and after that, the yarn store.”

In other words, Courtney was being kidnapped.

“I’m ready now, dear, if that’s all right with you.”

“Me, too, Grandma.” The sooner she gave in, the sooner she could get back to her room.

“Let me check to make sure the lock on the front door is turned,” her grandmother said.