Fade to Black (The Black Trilogy Book 1) by MC Webb Page B

could get Nana to smoke some weed with me. Then she wouldn’t worry so much. I laughed out loud at my thought, and Nana shot me a disgusted look.
    Nana thought we’d been drinking.
    “All the girls to run around with, and you run with that one,” Nana said to me.
    I think the irritation at me was gone, and now she was going to coach me. Forever coaching me. I acted as normal as possible, but later over dinner, I told her we swam and giggled by ourselves. No drinking, which wasn’t a lie.
    “Nothing bad,” I said, and honestly believed it.
    After I’d gone to bed, I heard Papaw saying, “Gracie, you got to let the girl live a little. We both know she’s lucky to be alive.”
    Nana never brought it up again, but she sternly told me the next day I was to always leave a note to say where I was going and who I was with, and that I shouldn’t go drinking. Then she proceeded to cover my sunburned nose with aloe from the plants she grew in her window boxes. She swore the herbs she grew cured everything. Oh, how I wished that were true. I’d bathe in them, if they would cure me.
    The funny thing was, the more I was with Lana, the safer I felt. Mostly, I felt safer with myself. I was getting comfortable with Matthew now, and as we waited for Josh to finish football practice the following October, I let him hold me and kiss me. I was now a sophomore, and Matthew was a senior, making plans for college. I was so excited for him, but when he talked to me about Duke, I wept inside.
    I didn’t want him to leave me. I wanted him to stay with me forever. I never said this out loud, but it’s how I felt. We were unofficially attached to each other. He walked me to classes, picked me up, and drove me home each day.
    We went to the movies on weekends with Lana and Josh, who shamelessly made out, to the point that Matthew and I would not sit with them any longer. The more I prayed time would go slower, the faster it went by. It was December before we knew it.

 
    chapter eleven
    Rifle season was about to begin. I saw Maurice and his son, Jean-Paul, several times. I saw them when they came from the south to camp for the week in one of the hunting cabins. Jean-Paul would stare holes through me. I didn’t know what to make of him. I was guessing he was around twenty years old. His skin was not as dark as his father’s, but his eyes were the same shade of near black.
    He was a very attractive man, and from the little he said, he seemed very intelligent. He was kind to me, a gentleman from another place and time. When father and son would join us for dinner, he would bow slightly when I entered the room, or stood until Nana and I had taken our seats at the table. I began to be suspicious of the increasing visits, after I overheard Maurice and Papaw talking one night on the porch, their cigar smoke so thick you could cut it with a knife.
    “Forgive my curious nature, Nathaniel, but your granddaughter? How old is she?”
    Papaw chuckled, “Too young, Maurice.”
    They sipped brandy and rocked in their rocking chairs.
    “Sixteen? Seventeen?” Maurice asked.
    Papaw chuckled again.
    “Piper is not yet sixteen and she might as well be twelve.”
    A heavy silence took my Papaw, and I knew he was thinking of me being twelve. I would do anything to relieve him of the burden of that knowledge.
    “I only ask, because my Jean-Paul seems mighty taken with her.”
    Papaw snorted.
    “No offense to you or Jean-Paul, but I’m hoping Piper stays with me till my dying day. She is more joy than anything I’ve ever known.”
    I placed a hand over my mouth to silence my cry. He was the joy in my life, and I, a dirty, spoiled girl, didn’t deserve the love he and Nana gave me so freely.
    A poke to my ribs made me jump.
    “What are you doing?” Nathan whispered.
    He was dressed in his too-short pajamas, and his brown hair messy, the worse for wear. I put my finger to my lips, grabbed his arm, and led him out of the room.
    “Nosy,” he teased me,