If the Fates Allow

by Rainbow Rowell

So they talked about the things that had brought them together today: Their worry. Their caution. Their firm belief that most people were idiots.

“Your grandmother would want us to say grace,” he said, after they’d piled up their plates. “Hmm.” Reagan was noncommittal. She’d already taken a bite of turkey. “But if she wanted me to keep saying grace,” he went on, “she should have outlived me.”

This was gutwrenching

Reagan’s grandmother had been a short, wide woman who dyed her hair red and always wore pink lipstick. She was active in her church, active in the community. The type of person who went to all of her grandkids’ recitals and school plays, even after she had twenty of them. She framed every school photo the grandkids ever gave her, always leaving the old ones inside so that the pictures stacked up and made the backs hard to close. Reagan’s senior picture was sitting on a coffee table in the living room, and if you opened it up, her whole childhood would spring out.

He looked young. The way country boys look young. Even this side of thirty.