“Jackson Mallory, you get out of that basement right now, son! You can’t mope down there forever.” Gran’s voice penetrated the darkness of my basement cave. I glanced over at my laptop screen, the only light in the darkness, and groaned. I’d missed my nine am alarm by an hour somehow.

“I’ll be up in a minute, Gran. I missed my alarm.” Even when you work from home alarm clocks are necessary to stay on schedule. Mine had failed me today.

I didn’t really care, but Gran liked to have breakfast made and the dishes washed by now so she was going to be off all day. She might be retired but she still worked on a schedule.

“Have you grown a pair yet?” she called down, not leaving the door.

My head swiveled in her direction as my jaw dropped. Did she? Had she just said what I thought she said?

“Gran?” I called, getting out of the bed and automatically reaching for my hair. Damn, that was a hard habit to break. Gran was happy about it though, and she’d finally put her scissors away when I came home four days ago.

“Have you told that show to shove it yet and contacted Laney?” I heard a low cackle of glee and knew she’d enjoyed shocking me.

“You know I can’t, Gran. I can’t jeopardize my business over this stupid show. At least, that’s what my lawyer said. They’ve got some very tiny print in a very odd place, that screws, uh, messes me over completely if I don’t at least finish the show.” I walked up the stairs and into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry. You did meet this Laney girl, after all.” To a woman Gran’s age, anybody under fifty was a boy or a girl. I started to brush my teeth as she went on. “You are still taken with her, right?”

I gave a nod as I spit out toothpaste bubbles and rinsed my mouth. “Completely, Gran, that’s the only reason I haven’t throttled you yet.”

I washed my face and then went with her to the kitchen. “Sorry I wasn’t up earlier. My alarm just didn’t want to go off today.”

“It’s alright, boy. I know you didn’t do it on purpose.” Her fingers brushed over my hair lovingly as she walked by me. So many times I’d checked to make sure she hadn’t cut off my hair in a sneak attack and now I didn’t have to worry about that. She still made me nervous with those scissors, though.

“I can’t contact her at all. It’s crazy. I don’t know how they’d find out if I did, but still. I hate this, but you’re right, at least I met Laney.” I watched her as she started making biscuits, a measuring cup nowhere in sight, and wondered how many more times she’d get to make me breakfast.

A rather morbid thought, but a sensible one. Gran wasn’t going to live forever, that was part of the reason I was here now, to help her out as she aged. I’d needed a place to hide from a money-hungry public and she’d needed me, so here I was. She wouldn’t admit it now, but she needed far more help than she’d ever ask for.

“I’ll get that wood chopped and stacked up for you.”

Gran still used a wood-stove to heat the house in the winter and hated electric heat. A little exercise would do me a world of good and keep my mind off my problems.

“You’re such a good boy, Jake.” Her fingers were covered in biscuit dough, but there were now eight perfectly shaped biscuits in the pan.

She put the biscuits in the oven and washed her hands. I poured us both a cup of coffee and set it on the table as she sat down, the smell of frying sausage filling the air with sage and rosemary.

“How many eggs do you want this morning?” she asked, inspecting her nails for stray flour.

“Three. That pile of wood is pretty massive.” I grinned as she squinted at me, her cantankerous persona back in place.

“Gonna eat me out of house and home, boy!”

We both knew I paid the bills for her, but I let her have her fun.

“You always said food is fuel, Gran. If you want me to cut up that wood for fuel, I need some fuel.”

She glared at me before she finned back.

“I suppose you do.” She went through the motions from memory, turning the sausage, frying eggs, checking the biscuits, before she put the sausage on a plate and down into the oven she turned off. The rest would stay warm while she prepared the gravy.

We had a beautiful breakfast, broken only by the sounds of delight I made as I sank my teeth into gravy covered biscuits. I’d have to cook this for Laney one morning. Gran had taught me long ago how to cook for myself, but she’d never let me cook for her, not unless she was sick.

“Have you got bingo today?” I asked as she picked up her now empty plate and headed to the sink.

“Mary Beth is bringing the gin today,” she answered in a distracted tone, her gaze on the house next door. “Why don’t you get started on that wood, Jake, and I’ll get these dishes cleaned up.”

“I wish you’d let me buy you a dishwasher...” I started, but she cut in, the argument an old one.

“I don’t need none of that foolery, Jake. I have two hands, soap, and one of those sponge thingies. I can manage. Besides, it keeps my fingers nimble.” She cackled as though she’d made a dirty joke and I tried not to think about it.

Putting a flannel shirt over my long-sleeved T-shirt, I went outside and stuffed my feet into work boots before I grabbed the ax. A little bit of hard work would clear my head for the day. I was ignoring work I should be doing with my own business, but it was under control. I had built up a rhythm and had destroyed most of the pile when a sound stopped me mid-swing.

I turned to see the neighbor coming out of the house and going to her car. She looked strangely familiar, and I walked up the large oak on Gran’s side of the yard to get a better look at her. I stood there, stunned, as I watched Laney back the car up and drive away.

My first instinct was to run after her, to scream out her name until she stopped, but common sense held me back. My lawyer had been very specific about exactly what I’d lose, and I couldn’t jeopardize the years Gran had left by doing that. Even for love.

I watched her drive away and felt anger burn through me. I shouldn’t have to make these decisions, I shouldn’t have to choose between love and my Gran’s wellbeing. I had more money than some whole countries. I could build that all up again, right?

This was Laney, after all. Not a woman like Arabella, or the ones from the online dating sites offering to be my sex slave for a chance at plastic happiness. I looked back at the house and saw Gran in the window. She was beckoning me to come into the house.

“Son, sit down.”

“How did the show not figure it out, Gran?” I asked as I sat down in a rocking chair that was probably new twenty years before I was born.

“That the addresses were so similar? I guess none of them took the time to notice.” She was in her own rocker, covered in that awful shade of green velvet that was popular back in the seventies.

I was too stunned to think any further than that. Laney was only next door. Just next door. I could talk to her when I wanted to, I could see her anytime I wanted to. I could touch her and smell her. All I had to give up was the ability to take care of Gran in the manner she deserved.

She didn’t have to sneak gin into her bingo games, she did it because she loved the naughtiness of it. She could set up her own bingo hall if she wanted, one with a bar, but she preferred doing it the way she did because it was fun. I’d offered her a brand new home, a brand new car, and everything she could possibly want and all she’d asked for was my time to nail down her carpet again.

One day she might need far more care than I could provide for her. If she was lucky, she’d go peacefully in her sleep in twenty years. That wasn’t guaranteed though, and I liked knowing if she ever changed her mind I could buy my Gran a mansion, a Ferrari, and a strip club full of bingo callers if she so desired. She thought I didn’t know about those, but I’d heard her talking with her lady friends.

I felt my lips quirk at that and looked at her. “You knew she was just there then?”

“Oh, Tony, her roommate, and I have had this planned for a while now. He set her up to go on the show, and I set you up. We’ve been trying to get you two together for a long time and neither of you would play along. We thought if you were on the show, then you’d have to spend time together. We were right, weren’t we?” She gave me a gimlet-eyed look and I wanted to kiss her sweet, wrinkled cheeks.

“You were, Gran. The question is, what do we do now?”

“Nothing, if that’s what you want to do, we hide you away here, you get to keep all those piles of money, and you finish the show.” She sighed and looked away for a minute. I knew she thought that was a bad idea. “Or you stop worrying about me and do something for yourself. You’ve been taking care of me since you were young, always there to help, being such a good kid, and making sure you did everything you were supposed to. You never took the time to have real fun, or fall in love. It’s time you did, Jackson.”

She only used my real name when she was being serious, or trying to get my attention. It worked as always.

“But, what if you get sick, Gran, and need nurses? An operation? You can’t afford that.” I felt helpless just thinking about it.

“Jake, you know as well as I do that you can’t run from love, and you can’t run from death. If it comes for me, it will. I have some money left from your grandfather’s, and a little of my own saved up. I’ll be fine. I want you to have what your parents missed out on, son. A long life with kids and a happy future. Don’t throw that away over an old woman at the end of her own life.”

Her words stung a bit, the reminder that my parents had died a horrible death was never easy to take, but Gran’s words couldn’t be truer. For the first time in my life, I knew I was in love. Could I do that to Gran though? She’d been through a lot in her life, she’d lost her husband when she was in her early forties, their May-December romance leaving her a widow at a young age, and then she’d lost my father and her daughter-in-law in a fire that nearly took me with it. I owed her my loyalty and devotion, didn’t I?

“There’s always the chance they won’t figure it out, Jake. If you’re willing to take that chance.”

I nodded in agreement, lost in thought. I couldn’t do that to Gran, no matter what she said about it. But maybe, maybe we could keep it quiet.

“How about we go buy a Christmas tree, Gran? I think I’d like to have one this year.” We didn’t always decorate for the holiday, the memory of those we’d lost, both my parents and my grandfather, was too overwhelming some years, but this year we both had hope for a brighter future, and I really wanted to believe in the magic of the Christmas season, something I’d given up a long time ago.

Laney was bringing all of that back for me and I could see that Gran felt much the same way about it.

“You mean the whole shebang, don’t you? We’re going to buy more than a Christmas tree. You know most of my decorations are older than you.” She looked like she was twelve years old again and staring into the old storefront window from the past she loved to talk about. I could all but see her nose squished up against a window as she looked in.

I couldn’t stop the smile on my face as she stood up and went to her room to put on her ‘going out’ clothes.

I didn’t know exactly what I’d decide to do, but for now, I could bring the spirit of Christmas into the house and pray like mad that it worked. Something had to, I couldn’t live so close to Laney without going over there and kissing her. Besides, I think Gran and I both needed it this year. We’d had one too many dark, lonely Christmases in the past. One way or another, I was going to give Gran the best one she’d ever had. If the show ended the way I wanted it to, I’d be spending it with both Gran and Laney. That was something to believe in.