“Seriously?” I said. “I get this kind of treatment from you? You’re worse than Dad!”

“Where do you think he gets it, child?” She continued to laugh but leaned over and rolled the growing watermelon up on its side. “See? Still too green. You have to wait till the underbelly turns a little yellow.”

“You’re funny, Granny Grace. Truly.”

She swatted at me with her gardening glove. “You want to help me get the beans in? All these weeds have about done in my back.”

I groaned. “Didn’t we pick all the beans the last time we were out here?” It felt like all I’d been doing in her garden was pick beans.

“We did. And the time before that, and the time before that,” she said. “Don’t begrudge a good harvest, Lane. A full freezer is never a bad thing.”

“I think I’m too busy smelling the watermelon.”

She laughed again. “Now you sound like your mama. How about you pick ’em, I’ll cook ’em, then we both get to eat ’em.”

“Fine. If you’re offering to cook, I’ll pick. Do you mind if Jamie eats with us? He’s coming over later. We were going to go out, but if you’re cooking, I think I’d rather ask him to stay.”

“That’s fine with me. Just be sure to pick enough for three.” She crossed to the gardening hutch at the back of the house and pulled out a basket. “Here. Use this.”

I took the basket from her outstretched hand. “I won’t stop till it’s full.”

She rinsed her hands in the deep sink next to the hutch, then dried them on her apron. “You’re getting serious with that boy, aren’t you?”

“With Jamie? Yeah, I guess so.”

“You told your mama about him?”

I sat on the porch steps, the empty basket resting on my knees. “Not too much. I mean, she knows I’m seeing someone. But . . . I don’t know. Anything I tell her, she tells her mother, and I don’t think I’m ready for those phone calls yet.” My Puerto Rican grandmother. Fierce. Stubborn. And devastated that I wasn’t married by my twenty-second birthday. Even three years later, she was still giving my phone number to every missionary who served in all of Puerto Rico.

Granny Grace chuckled. “If you’re getting serious with Jamie, that will help things, won’t it? You’ve found a nice man. She’ll be happy for you.”

I stood back up and moved toward the beans. “I know. You’re probably right. But you know how Mama is. She overanalyzes everything. I never know if I’m having a conversation with my mother or with Dr. Bishop, who might launch into a psychoanalysis every time I turn around.”