can you tell me about grandma?

["Can you tell me about grandma?" He sighed softly, running his fingers through her blonde curls. "Please?"

"What do you want to know?"]

"Can you tell me about grandma?" The question hit him as he was turning the page in his book. Book 46 out of 165. The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Norma had loved movies, old movies especially, but one thing that he hadn't learned about her until he moved in was that she had a soft spot for reading. She had a bookcase in the basement filled with books, old and new. One of his favorite things was to come home to find her in bed, nose buried in her latest find. She would beam up at him, place the novel on the nightstand and pull him down to her with a kiss. And then she would tell him to go shower so she could finish the chapter.

He didn't really know when he had decided to read the books; he found himself wandering the old house one night, coming across them with a sad smile, thumbing through pages of the one she had last read, taking solace in the fact that his fingers were running the same lines hers once had. He counted them: 165 books of all shapes and genres. Reading them filled him with a sort of peace, as if the words were holding his hands and running him through a piece of her life he hadn't been privy to at the time. He considered them a gift.

"Grandpa?" The little voice shook him out of the haze, his eyes flying up to meet crystal blue ones staring up at him expectantly. Those eyes were so familiar and yet alien at the same time. He would never forget the moment he first caught sight of them years ago, peering at the tiny child in Emma's arms and sucking in air when she cracked them open for a fraction of a second. But it was long enough, long enough for him to have to excuse himself to the restroom and be drawn into the memory where he first caught sight of another pair of brilliant ones seemingly identical to those of that child's. She had her grandmother's eyes.

"I'm sorry. What did you say?" He knew what she said, but he wanted to be sure. Louise stood up from her toys on the floor and walked over to climb into Alex's lap, tucking her tiny head under his chin.

"Can you tell me about grandma?" He sighed softly, running his fingers through her blonde curls. "Please?"

"What do you want to know?"

She shrugged her shoulders at this, using his chest as leverage and pushing herself up to look at him. "Whenever I ask Daddy about her, he just gets real sad and doesn't say much. And when Mommy talks about her, it makes Daddy sad and they sometimes cries. And I know it's really sad, what happened to her, but sometimes I get sad too because I won't ever know her."

Louise was 8, well almost 8 anyhow. Dylan and Emma found out they were expecting a year and a half after Emma's surgery. When they heard about his mother, they rushed back and chose to stay in White Pine Bay to be near Alex and see Norman got the help he needed. Alex hadn't known many children in his life, but he had to guess she was smart for her age. She seemed to have a certain intuition about her, which might explain why she knew so little about Norma. It makes Mommy and Daddy sad, so she better not talk about it.

He smiled at her, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "You're right: it is very sad what happened to your grandma," he said. Her face dropped and she pulled her gaze from his, twiddling her fingers. "But that doesn't mean we can't talk about her." A small grin made its way onto her face, and she dropped back down to curl against his chest. He dropped a kiss to her hair before beginning. "She was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen…"

"I know," she interrupted. "Daddy has a picture of her in his wallet, and Mommy has one framed in our hallway. She's really pretty."

"She is," he agreed. "She didn't really have a favorite color, but she liked blue. She said it reminded her of the lupines in the field behind her house when she was little."

"Like the ones in the garden?" He nodded with a small laugh. Observant.

"Yes, those are lupines." Sometimes he would sit in the garden for hours on end, immersed in the feelings it brought about. After she died, he had planted one filled with everything he knew she would love. He got around to planting those fruit trees, all different kinds. They were bearing fruit, and every time he went out to pick them, he couldn't help imagining the smile that would've been on her face if she were there to do it with him.

"She had a great sense of humor, could always make someone laugh if she wanted. She was very witty," he admitted, remembering the myriad of conversations they'd had over the years that ended with him rolling his eyes and her smirking. He would've never admitted it, but he loved her teasing, the nicknames she gave him. Big Daddy of White Pine Bay is still his favorite if he was being honest.

"She had the biggest heart a person could have, always loving others more than she loved herself." He felt tears beginning the prick his eyes. Her unconditional love had killed her in the end- murdered her and left him in a sobbing heap, begging her to please be alive. He raised an arm and wiped the creases of his eyes. Louise didn't need to know that. Norman doesn't exist to her. One day she'll find a picture of the boy with floppy brown hair and bright eyes and ask either her dad or mom who he is, but for now, Norman is no one. She may be smart, but she's too young to begin to understand such darkness.

"Old movies were her favorite, but she loved to read, too. She made the best chicken pot pie in the entire world," he offered. "She loved Christmas time and would always go all out decorating and throwing tinsel on everything she could reach."

"Christmas is my favorite, too!" she exclaimed.

"You two are very much alike," he told her with a small smile. "You have her eyes and her smile and her hair." Alex wouldn't tell Louise this, but she had Norma's cry too, the one where it sounds like you're not getting enough air into your lungs fast enough and you just wheeze. "You have her laugh," he opted for.

"And I have her name!"

More tears sprung to the surface, and he grit his teeth. He had poured his entire soul down his cheeks after she was gone, yet talking about her with someone else still got to him. It might have been because he so rarely had someone to talk to about her.

"Yes, you certainly do." He paused, pressing fingertips to raw eyes. "Most importantly is that your grandmother wasn't perfect. She was impulsive, and sometimes she wouldn't look at the big picture and make rash decisions anyway. But the only thing that really matters is that she tried to be the best she could be for the people she loved. It didn't always work, but she tried. She kept getting back up after someone knocked her down. If you want to be like your grandma, try to be like that."

"I want to be like her every single day. I would want her to like me," she said.

"Louise, she would have loved you so much. She would love you for being you."

"I wish she was still here."

"You and me both, sweetheart. You and me both."