“Random people?”

“No offense.”

I laughed. “Well, too late, offense already taken.”

“You know what I meant.” He paused for a moment. “I wonder if she got a lifetime supply of zit cream from that commercial.”

I pushed him. “You’re a dork.”

With late afternoon light shining through the windows of my art room later that day, I started a perspective piece—the view from the stage. Again, I tried to go just from my memory and how I had felt. It had been so hot up there on stage. And bright. The light shining in my eyes basically blinded me. I squeezed a large amount of yellow and white onto my palette. I mixed a bit of each color and blotted it onto the middle of the canvas, making a quarter-size spotlight. I squeezed out some red and cream, some black and brown for the chairs and people and stage that would surround that spotlight, and got to work.

The window in the room had grown dark, and now only my lamp lit the painting. I moved to the switch and turned on more overhead lights to assess my progress. It was wrong. There was something wrong with it. Too many chairs. Too many eyes from too many people looking forward. That’s not how I had felt on the stage. I had seen hardly any chairs and almost no eyes. I swiped a clean brush through more yellow and white. I pulled out the light from the spotlight wider and wider. I streaked it across the chairs. The not-dry red mixed with the white and yellow and made orange swirls on the outside. The side of me that had obviously always loved my paintings to reflect reality almost painted more yellow over it, but I stopped myself. It was interesting movement. The spotlight in the center now made it almost impossible to see the surrounding chairs or people watching or edge of the stage. It took over the painting.

My eyes were tired. They had been straining too long. I resisted the urge to rub them with my paint-covered hands. I wasn’t quite done with the painting, but it was time to call it a night. I stepped back but then stopped when I noticed a face in the few that remained just outside the spotlight. I leaned closer and squinted. It was my mother. I’d painted my mother into my painting without even realizing it. My mother—the least likely person to be in that auditorium today.

TWELVE

“What about her?” I asked Grandpa as we pushed a cart through the produce section.

Grandpa was squeezing nectarines and placing only a select few into the clear bag he held. “That woman? You want to know her story?”

“Why not?”

“I’m just wondering why all the people you are pointing out are women in their sixties.” He tied the top of the bag in a knot and added it to the cart.

Grandpa always tried to set me up, and I always tried to set him up. And we both never actually agreed to the setup. It was our thing. “No reason,” I hummed.

He pushed the cart forward. “That’s what I thought. Your list isn’t a matchmaking opportunity for me. It’s a growth opportunity for you.”

“I don’t see why it can’t be one and the same.”

Grandpa bonked me on the head with a red pepper and added it to the cart. “Let’s not mess up the dynamics of our already precariously balanced home.”

“Precariously balanced? We have a perfectly balanced home.”

“Exactly.”

“No.” I huffed. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that we are lovely people and can add another lovely person to our mix.”

Grandpa stopped the cart near a bin of apples and turned toward me. “Now that you’re thirteen, we need to have a serious conversation.”

I knew he was throwing an age joke at me to counterbalance the ones I always threw at him, so I chose not to react. “You want to have a serious conversation in the middle of the produce section?”

“What better place?”

“I don’t know, maybe a more private aisle. Like the cleaning products. That aisle is always empty. Nobody buys their cleaning products at a grocery store.”

Grandpa didn’t give a sarcastic rebuttal, only folded and unfolded the grocery list he had brought. That’s when I realized this wasn’t a joke. He really wanted to have a serious conversation with me in the middle of the produce section. I looked around. There were only a few people picking through a vegetable bin. I lowered my voice. “What is it?”

“Your mother was supposed to go to the store today. It was her turn.”

Oh. I’d thought he was going to talk about meeting someone, but this was about my mom. “I know.”

“She hasn’t left the house for more than a walk to the park in weeks.”

“I know. I think she needs to find a friend or two. It always used to help.” I hadn’t thought of it before recently, because she seemed fine. But now that she was headed in the wrong direction, I knew she needed something.

He pressed his lips together, then said, “She needs to see a professional.”

“What?”

“If she won’t leave the house, we’ll bring one to her. I’ve been trying to get your father on board with this idea for a couple of years now, but he isn’t having it. You know your dad, alpha male.”

“My dad isn’t like that,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

Grandpa shook his head. “Your dad is a great guy. I’ve always liked him. But he doesn’t want to admit she needs help.”

“Is it really that big of a deal that she doesn’t leave the house? In the house she is lovely and happy.” Everyone had their weird idiosyncrasies. Just because hers was different from everyone else’s didn’t mean we were hanging by a thread.

“I think it’s something she needs to work on.”

“But if Dad doesn’t . . .”

“You don’t think she needs to work on it?”

The image of my mom’s face in my theater painting flashed through my mind as an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Maybe deep down I did know that, even wanted it. I shook away the image. “Sometimes I do, but most of the time I’m just happy she’s my mom.”

“Maybe if you talked to your dad about how little she goes out.”

“I don’t like to worry him. He already feels so guilty when he’s gone. He gets home so soon. Can’t we just wait and see how she does when he’s home?” She really was so much better when he was home. It was like he pushed some sort of reset button on her.

“Like I said, precariously balanced,” Grandpa said under his breath and set the cart in motion again, heading toward the dairy row.

“Don’t be mad at me, Grandpa.”

He flashed me a smile. “I could never be mad at you, hon. I’ll work on your dad. You just be their daughter.”

“You just need to relax, Gramps. Everything will be fine.” It had to be. She was fine. We were all fine.

“Did you ever make callbacks for that play you tried out for the other day?” Grandpa asked.

I shook my head. “No. We were horrible at acting. Pretty much everyone there, even the little children, was better than Cooper and me.”

“That’s probably not true, but it’s good you know your weaknesses.”

“Yes, I have many.”

“What about him?” Grandpa asked.

We had turned down the soup and canned-vegetable aisle, and my grandpa was pointing to a guy studying soup cans at the end. At first I thought he was asking if he was one of my weaknesses, so I was confused.