“Mm-hmm,” Grams mumbled noncommittally.

“Shh!” Mrs. McGuillicutty, sitting down from Raiden, shushed us.

Loudly.

So loudly, Pastor Wright’s eyes came to our pew and narrowed, though he didn’t miss a word of his sermon.

I looked at my hands that I was folding in my lap and felt about eight years old.

“Shush yourself, Margaret,” Grams shot back. A Grams, I’ll add, who often acted eight years old, and now was clearly going to be one of those times. “God likes laughter,” she finished.

“Grams, let it go,” I told my lap.

“Some of us are trying to listen,” Mrs. McGuillicutty snapped.

“Then listen and keep your nose outta other people’s business,” Grams returned.

I turned my head and bent into her. “Please, Grams, just let it go.”

Grams settled back on a wiggle, grumbling, “Shushing my granddaughter. Who does she think she is?”

Not one ever to leave the last word, or in all honesty to be nice most of the time, Margaret McGuillicutty didn’t let it go either.

“I’m a churchgoing woman who wants to listen to the sermon,” she retorted to Grams.

I was too exhausted and riding a high of being with Raiden to do anything about it, but I just knew when Grams chose that pew and Mrs. McGuillicutty was in it that we should have found an alternate seating arrangement.

I was right.

Grams leaned across me to say to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “No one’s stopping you but you.”

“And perhaps our choir can have all of your attention as they sing their next hymn,” Pastor Wright suggested into his microphone, but the comment was clearly directed at us since he was staring straight at us. I knew he loved Grams and me (Mrs. McGuillicutty was up for debate), but he didn’t look all that happy.

Raiden lifted an arm and wrapped it around my shoulders. He tucked me tight to his side and dropped his lips to my ear.

“Let ‘em battle it out. You’re just makin’ it worse.”

I clamped my mouth shut and my eyes on the choir.

Grams and Mrs. McGuillicutty exchanged a few more barbs before Grams sat back, muttering, “I love this hymn and no McGuillicutty is gonna make me miss it.”

Thus letting Margaret have the last word with, “Boudreaux, think they own this town.”

Though Grams did get in a, “Humph!”

We successfully made it through the final prayer and communal hymn without incident, but hostilities reengaged after Pastor Wright released us.

“Falling asleep and whispering in church like it was a Boudreaux bedroom and kitchen. Shameful,” Mrs. McGuillicutty remarked loudly to no one, and all in the vicinity looked away like they wished they could whistle.

This, of course, meant Grams said to her, but directed her remark at me. “Need you to get me a cane, child. Not to walk with it, so I can beat Margaret over the head with it.”

Raiden chuckled.

Margaret gasped.

So did I, before I hissed, “Grams, we’re in church!”

She waved her hand in front of her face, “God’s forgiven me for a lot over ninety-eight years, that’s the least of it.”

“We gonna get breakfast or we gonna have a smackdown in pew three?” Raiden asked, sounding amused.

Grams didn’t miss a beat. “Breakfast. Need my vittles to perform a successful smackdown.”

Then she turned and toddled off slowly down the pew.

I leaned around Raiden and said to Mrs. McGuillicutty, “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGuillicutty.”

“As you should be,” she fired back. “No excuse for rudeness. And falling asleep in church? Appalling.”

I gave my apology, therefore did my duty to good manners. She could be ornery. She had to answer to God for that, not me.

Therefore, I was going to let it go and get out of there.

Raiden had other ideas.

He turned his big, tall frame Margaret McGuillicutty’s way and looked down at her.

“One, Hanna apologized. The right thing to do is accept, not throw it in her face. Two, Miss Mildred can take care of herself and she’s too old to give a damn what you think. Obviously, Hanna cares or she wouldn’t have apologized when she had no need to. Now what you gotta know is, if I’m standing next to her or not and I just hear you were rude to her, I’ll take it as you bein’ rude straight to me and I think most folks in this town know you do not want to be rude to me.”

She stared up at him, lips parted while I processed what he said and the fact that any of this was happening at all.

She snapped her mouth shut to hiss at Raiden like he was twelve, not thirty-two, “Well, I don’t believe it. I’ll be having a word with your mother, Raiden Miller.”

“Have at it. She won’t give a flying mostly because she thinks you’re as foul-tempered and aggravating as everyone else in town,” Raiden fired back.

A couple people heard and tittered, proving him right.

I decided we were both done so I grabbed his hand and yanked him down the pew.

Fortunately, he followed me.

We made it to Grams, then we followed in what felt like suspended motion as she made her slow way out of the church, her snail’s pace hindered further with the need to call a greeting to everyone she knew, which was just plain everyone.

Raiden made a break for it at the doors, mumbling his excuse of, “I’ll go get the Jeep.”

Fortunately, this meant when we got to the end of the walk at the front of the church Raiden was there.

Like we had when we came, I climbed into the back and Raiden held Grams steady at waist while she latched on with a bony hand. He mostly lifted her into her seat, but in a way where it made it seem like she put her foot to the edge of the door herself.

We were on our way when I decided a debrief was in order.

“I don’t believe that happened,” I remarked.

“Believe it, chère. Margaret has always been a sourpuss. Makes it worse, she had her sights set on your Granddaddy and never got over losin’ him to your Grandma.”

This was news.

And made the whole situation even more unbelievable.

“Seriously?” I asked. “That had to be fifty years ago, and sorry, Grams, but they’ve both passed. Holding a grudge when there’s no one left to hold it against?”

“Lost love, precious,” Grams replied, turning her head to look out the side window. “Stings like a wasp bite that never fades.”