I closed one eye in a squint as the faint image of a woman with intense makeup and white-blonde hair like a TV anchorwoman appeared in my mind. She’d been nice.

“Your personal-shopper friend?”

I got an arched brow. “She was not my personal shopper.”

And another awkward bomb. “Ohhh . . .” When I got some time, I was going to have to go over a lot of what I thought I knew. I had a sneaking suspicion there were many things I’d missed along the way. At which point it occurred to me, “You haven’t, um . . . shopped with her in while.”

“Six years. Which was my fault. Brooke and I started dating after GGB passed. It was long-distance at first so she was okay that I wasn’t out to anyone.”

“Even Dad?”

She nodded. “That didn’t occur until a few years ago.”

Whoa. I could not fathom that. Dad and Grandma Jo were always close. I thought that was one of the reasons I was bonded with both my parents, that Dad had used his relationship with Grandma Jo as a sort of paradigm. If I’d been gay, I was pretty sure both of my folks would have known before I did. It made me all the more grateful for them, knowing that they would always love me no matter what and never make me feel like GGB had made Grandma Jo feel. Like she had to live in two different worlds.

“How did you come out to Dad?”

“Brooke gave me an ultimatum—tell at least Skip or it’s over. She said four years of hiding was long enough. And she was right.”

“Okay, so you told Dad . . .”

“No.” Off my surprise, she squirmed. “I didn’t think she was serious; I thought we could keep going like we were.”

I balked. “For how long?”

She cringed. “Forever?”

“Grandma!”

I was genuinely shocked. My grandmother planned everything down to the tiniest detail. Always. She said it was because she was a Virgo. The idea that she had no plan to come out and was content to do nothing was incongruous with everything I knew about her.

“Admittedly, it wasn’t the best strategy,” she said dryly, as if reading my thoughts.

“Grandma, you would never let me get away with something like that.”

For the first time in my life, I watched my grandmother look abashed. “Because it’s foolish. I was foolish. Brooke broke up with me and by the time I realized it was real, it was also too late. She’d met someone else in Fort Worth. They’re married now.”

She set the owl back down.

“When did Dad find out?”

“When I had a borderline breakdown. He found me in a weepy mess and I told him everything, and he sent me to Hawaii for a month.”

My eyes grew wide. “That’s why you went to Hawaii for a month?”