"Just come. Now. The family house."
The line went dead.
I took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, my mind cycling through possibilities with each flight. My grandmother was eighty-seven.
There had been that heart scare two years ago, the one that had kept her in the hospital for a week while the doctors ran tests and the family gathered in waiting rooms pretending not to be terrified. She'd recovered fully, or so she claimed, but eighty-seven was eighty-seven. The body could only hold out for so long.
Stuart had the car waiting at the curb. I slid into the back seat and gave him the address, then spent the next twenty minutes staring out the window without seeing anything.
What if she'd fallen? The brownstone had those narrow stairs she refused to stop climbing. What if her heart had given out?What if I'd been so consumed by my own problems, so distracted by a woman who wanted nothing to do with me, that I'd missed the signs?
I should have visited more. Should have called. Should have brought Evie to the birthday dinner instead of making excuses.
If something had happened to her, if the last real conversation we'd had was about Xavier's gambling debts…
The car stopped. I was out before Stuart could come around, taking the front steps two at a time, shoving through the heavy oak door without bothering to knock. The foyer was quiet. No ambulance outside. No frantic staff rushing about. Just the familiar tick of the grandfather clock and the smell of furniture polish.
I found her in the parlor.
My grandmother sat in her favorite armchair by the window, afternoon light falling across her silver hair. A cup of tea rested in her hands, steam curling up toward the ceiling. Her posture was perfect, her expression sharp, her eyes tracking my entrance with the same cool assessment she'd been wielding since before I was born.
She looked perfectly fine.
"Sit down, Sebastian." She gestured to the chair across from her with one elegant hand. "We need to talk."
I stood in the doorway, my pulse still hammering, sweat cooling on the back of my neck. "Mother said there was an emergency."
"There is an emergency." She took a measured sip of her tea. "My grandson has been avoiding me for weeks, and I want to know why."
I stared at her. The adrenaline that had carried me across town was curdling into something else. Relief, yes, but also irritation. She'd scared me half to death for this?
"Grandmother…"
"Sit."
I sat.
She studied me the way she'd been studying people for eight decades, missing nothing, cataloging everything. The shadows under my eyes. The tension in my shoulders. The way my hands wouldn't quite stay still.
"You missed my birthday dinner," she said.
"I know. I apologize. There was a situation with Evie…"
“A situation." She set down her teacup with a precise click. "And what situation was so pressing that both you and my great-granddaughter couldn't attend? I'm eighty-seven years old, Sebastian. How many more birthday dinners do you think I have?"
"You're being dramatic."
"Am I?" Her eyes flashed. "Because from where I'm sitting, it seems like my own family is avoiding me. You don't visit. You don't call. You won't let me see Evie. Is that what you want? For me to die without laying eyes on my great-granddaughter again?"
The guilt landed like a punch. I dragged my hand down my face, suddenly exhausted. "It's not that simple," I said.
"Explain it to me."
I looked at my grandmother. At the woman who had shaped so much of who I was, who had held this family together through scandals and losses and my father's endless disappointments. She deserved the truth.
"Evie isn't comfortable around you," I said quietly.
My grandmother's expression changed, surprise first, then something that might have been hurt, quickly suppressed.