My Sweet Annie

Prologue

"Tabitha! It's your mother! Take cover!"

The sound of my own voice dragged me from a deep sleep. Judging from the dizziness I felt before even opening my eyes, I was still drunk.

"Tabitha! It's your mother! Take cover!"

I rolled onto my back, groping for my phone. As I slid my hand over the nightstand, something fell, clunking against the wall and the floor. "Damn it."

"Tabitha! It's your mother! Take cover!"

"I know," I groaned. "Jesus, hold on."

I forced myself up onto an elbow and reached for my lamp. By the time I'd stretched far enough to find the switch, my phone had stopped shouting at me. Wincing against the light, I hung my head for a moment, the world rocking around me.

Yes. Still drunk. Very.

My phone was lying on the carpeted floor, but I was unwilling to get out of bed. To grab it, I had to lean so far that I nearly slid right onto the floor. With an effort, I drew myself back up and flopped onto my back on the mattress, peering at the screen.

3:12 AM.

Such a late-night call meant one of two things: there was a family emergency, or my mother was having a crisis. I closed my eyes, rubbing a hand over my face. Usually, I would be able to talk Mom through a wine-soaked journey of despair. After her last relationship had abruptly ended, she'd had a few of those.

But tonight, I was on my own wine-soaked journey of despair. Colson and I had had the biggest fight we'd ever had the night before. I didn't remember polishing off the dregs of the bottle of red, but the empty glass on my night stand and my blurred vision suggested I had.

We'd said some awful things to one another. Last night would take a long time to fade in my memory. As angry as I was, I thought of him curled up on the couch and I ached.

Before I could pull my bleary focus back to the matter at hand—whether to call my mother back or let it wait until the morning—my screen brightened, flashing with a text.

MOM: call me when you get this tabby cat

"That's it? No hints?"

There was a soft rap at the door. I looked up. After the door didn't open, I called. "Yeah?"

Colson's voice, muzzy with sleep. "You alright? I heard your phone ringing."

"Yeah. Mom called. I'm gonna call her back."

"Everything okay?"

I hated that he was checking in on me. With the broken pieces of our relationship scattered on the floor around me, it would have been easier if he were an asshole. "Yeah. I don't know what's going on with Mom, but I'll find out. Go back to sleep, Cole."

"'Kay." A pause. "Good night."

I tapped into my missed calls and selected the redial option. Then I put the phone on speaker and set it on my chest, folding my arms over my face and waiting for the phone to ring.

She picked up almost before it could start. "Tabby?"

"Hey, Mom. Everything okay? It's 3 AM."

"I know. I'm sorry if I woke you up."

"Well, I knew it had to be something important. What's going on?"

There was a silence on the other end of the line. It was that silence, more than the timing of the call or the apparent urgency, that confirmed my fears. I sat up, my stomach twisting with alarm. My phone slipped off of my chest and into my lap; I turned it screen-up so I could hear the speaker. "Mom? What's wrong, is Tim okay?"

After another few seconds of silence, there came a sharp, indrawn breath, followed by a sob. When she spoke again, her voice was thick with tears. "Yes, Tim's fine, honey. It's Gran."

I blinked, blindsided. I only had one grandmother in my life, my mother's mother. "What happened to Gran?" I asked, my voice a thread.

"She had a stroke. She's gone."

My mind whirred. "What?"

"I'm sorry. We're going to have to figure out the funeral arrangements. In Iowa, of course. But I don't know any of that stuff yet. I'm just—I'm just reeling."

Horrified silence wrapped me in a cold cloak as I grappled with this new, impossible knowledge.

Gran was gone. My grandmother, Ruth. The formidable, artistic, independent woman who'd raised her daughter by herself, who still lived on a rural Iowa acreage. Gran. She hadn't even had any health problems that I knew of. Achy knees when it was stormy. That was all.

How could Gran be gone?

I heard Mom's soft sniffs on the other end of the line, but I couldn't speak for several seconds. Finally, I said, "Um...Did you call Tim?"

"Yes. Yeah. I spoke with him before I called you."

"Okay. Good." It didn't surprise me that my mother had chosen to call my little brother first. Mom and Tim were close in a way that Mom and I simply never had been. "Are you...okay?"

"I hadn't even talked to her in over six months," she said. Tears thickened her voice. "I hadn't even said a word to her in over six months."

My heart clenched tight in my chest. I had known there'd been a fight between Mom and Grandma over Mom's most recent boyfriend. That was almost all I knew about what had happened. I had been so bad about calling. Every two or three months, maybe. I knew enough about Mom and Gran to know that it had to have been a fight over Mom's last boyfriend.

What had been the last thing Mom said to Gran?

What had been the last thing I said to her? I love you. God, I hoped it was I love you.

Sitting alone in bed, I stared into the dark and listened to my mother cry.