The SEAL's Secret Daughter

by Christy Jeffries

  Monica’s throat grew tight. She wasn’t ready to be one of Ethan’s commitments. “I doubt Gran even remembers that you said you would come with us. Or, you know, about that other thing tonight.”

  Monica tried to give him a dismissive wave of her hand, hoping he’d forgotten about the second half of the bargain he’d made with her grandmother. But Ethan folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t matter what Mrs. Alvarez remembers. If I say I’m going to do something, then I’m going to do it. Unless, of course, you found another date for the St. Patrick’s Day Dance tonight?”

  Oh great. He loudly mentioned the very thing she’d been trying to avoid right as Gran walked out of the kitchen with the handles of a wicker basket looped over her arm.

  “That’s right, the St. Patrick’s Day Dance is tonight. I hope we’re back from the picnic in time for you kids to go.”

  “Gran, we’re not going on a picnic today.” She shot Ethan a knowing look. See, she wouldn’t have remembered if you hadn’t brought it up. “We’re going to Legacy Village to take a tour.”

  “Is that the old folks home?” her grandmother asked.

  “It’s a memory care center,” Trina offered.

  “Oh, and you brought Bettina with you.”

  “Actually, Gran that’s not—”

  “It’s okay if she calls me that,” Trina said softly, and Monica could’ve hugged the girl for being so understanding.

  “Well, then what are we waiting for?” Gran asked as she walked out to Ethan’s truck carrying the picnic basket. Her tap shoes pinged against the sidewalk, but at least she’d been willing to put on a pair of stretchy pants and a cardigan sweater over her favorite leotard instead of her old bathrobe.

  “Thank you for always being so sweet with her,” Monica whispered to Trina as they followed Ethan and Gran outside. “Sometimes, she mistakes me for her sister, too.”

  “Well, I’ve never been anyone’s sister, so I don’t mind.”

  “Me neither.” Monica smiled and gave Trina’s shoulder a little squeeze. The girl didn’t flinch or back away, so they were definitely making progress.

  Legacy Village was located near the military hospital, thirty minutes down the mountain. Monica sat quietly beside Trina in the back of the crew cab and tried not to look at the digital clock on Ethan’s dash or think about how much time it would take to visit Gran every day. Or worse, to get to Gran if she had a major episode and needed Monica.

  Her grandmother kept up a steady stream of conversation, regaling Ethan with tales of her glory days as a backup dancer in Hollywood during the sixties. “Have you seen my picture with Elvis?”

  “The one on your fireplace mantel? I did see that,” Ethan said for the fifth time in only ten minutes. “Did the King ask you for your autograph?”

  Gran giggled and playfully swatted at Ethan’s shoulder. “No, but he did ask me to teach him how to do the frug.”

  “What’s the frug?” Trina asked.

  “It’s a dance where you...um...you move your... I can’t exactly remember.” Gran turned to look at Monica and her expression was slack, her eyes blinking several times. “How far away is this picnic, anyway?”

  “We’re almost there,” Ethan said, and Gran’s head snapped back to him. Alarm spread through Monica because her grandmother was now frowning.

  “No. This isn’t it. The Fourth of July picnic is always in Town Square Park and this is definitely not the way to Town Square Park.” Gran’s face had gone pale and she pivoted in her seat again, her eyes darting frantically between Trina and Monica as she clutched her purse against her chest. “Aren’t you two going to stop him? The driver is taking us to the wrong place.”

  “Gran.” Monica put a calming hand on the older woman’s shoulder, but Gran jumped away from her, knocking her bony elbow into the dashboard. Monica’s heart crumpled at the realization that her own grandmother was suddenly terrified of her.

  “Stop calling me that. Where are you people taking me? I want to go back. Turn around. I’ll call the police.” Gran reached for the door handle, as if she planned to leap out of a vehicle doing fifty miles an hour down a two-lane highway. Thankfully, Ethan had locked the doors when they’d first gotten inside. He looked in the rearview mirror at Monica, his brows raised as though to ask her what she wanted him to do.

  “Gran, it’s me, Monica. Your granddaughter...” she started again, but her grandmother had managed to get her window halfway down and was yelling for help in Spanish. Luckily, the bike lane was empty, but what if someone thought they were abducting her? What if someone reported them to adult protective services? Fear paralyzed Monica as her brain ran through every worst-case scenario.

  “Siri, play Elvis,” Trina said into her smartphone and the beginning strains of “Viva Las Vegas” came out of the speaker. It took Gran a few seconds to recognize the intro of the congo drums, but by the time the King began crooning the chorus, Monica’s grandmother was already breathing more steadily.

  Monica’s own breathing, though, didn’t settle until the next song began and Gran started tapping her fingers along to the beat of “Suspicious Minds.”

  Exhaling through her nose, Monica slouched against the backseat, trying to get her heart rate under control. Suspicious minds, indeed. The appropriateness of the lyrics wasn’t lost on her. Or on Ethan, apparently, who kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Hey, did I ever tell you guys that I have a photo of me with Elvis?” Gran asked, as though she hadn’t been in full paranoia mode a few minutes ago, about to fling her frail body out of a moving vehicle in order to get away from the one person in the world who loved her the most.

  “No kidding?” Ethan said casually, despite the fact that his fingers were still clenched around the steering wheel at the ten-and-two position. “I’d really love to see that picture sometime.”

  “It’s on the fireplace mantel at home. Right next to Monica’s college graduation picture. I always knew my mija would go to college.”

  “Did you ever go to college, Mrs. Alvarez?” Trina asked.

  “I didn’t even finish high school, dear. I had my first professional audition when I was fifteen. I had to lie about my age, of course...” Gran continued talking about her short-lived dance career and Monica closed her eyes as she massaged her temples, crisis temporarily averted. For now.

  She’d read all the books, done all the research. She knew that people with Alzheimer’s responded well to familiar music and stories about their youth. More important, she’d experienced Gran being confused and forgetting who she was at least several times a day. But her grandmother had never looked at her with those terrified eyes, as if Monica was out to hurt her or cause damage.

  Instead of responding properly to the situation, though, Monica herself panicked and had just sat there frozen. Guilt washed over her as she replayed her own incompetence in bringing Gran down from such a chilling episode. Rather, it had been a quick thinking eleven-year-old who’d saved the day.

  Chapter Ten

  Monica knew within the first ten minutes of the tour that there was no way she could leave her grandmother at Legacy Village. It was too big, too full of people who also needed help—some appearing more incapacitated or dependent than her own grandmother. Gran could get lost in a place like this. Or worse, forgotten. But Monica smiled and nodded and followed the intake nurse, a middle-aged woman with purple hair and a name tag that said NICOLE in large print, as she showed them the independent living apartments and the water aerobics pool, and the full-service dining options.

  “They sure have a lot of old people here,” Gran said to no one in particular as they passed several residents parked in wheelchairs near the “Drive-In Theater,” which was really just a big movie room with a huge screen on one wall and murals painted with old-fashioned cars on the other walls.

  Monica didn’t point out th
e fact that her grandmother was of a similar age as the majority of residents, and Trina kept her phone in her hand, probably prepared to play more Elvis songs in case another one of Gran’s episodes began.

  Nicole was talking to Gran about the activities calendar when Ethan put his hand on Monica’s waist and leaned toward her. “So what do you think?”

  “It’s clean. And the people seem nice. But I don’t think it’s for Gran.”

  “She seems to like it so far.” He nodded to Gran who was waving at a silver-haired woman hunched over a walker as though they were long-lost friends.

  “Well, I’m sure they’re only showing us the best parts.”

  “Now you sound like your neighbor Mr. Simon.” Ethan didn’t remove his hand and his lips lowered toward her temple. “He wrote down my license plate number the other day.”

  “He writes down everyone’s license plate numbers. He also regularly posts to the neighborhood watch app every time Mrs. Fitzroy gets a package delivery because he thinks the UPS driver has the same style mustache as someone on the Crime Stoppers website.”

  “Exactly. Why do you guys always think the worst of people?” Ethan’s warm breath against her hairline was currently preventing her from doing any thinking at all. Besides, Monica was only being cautious. She certainly wasn’t as bad as Mr. Simon.

  “Listen, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the place. It’s fine for other people’s grandparents. But it’s not what I want for Gran.”

  “It might not be what you want, but it’s what she needs that matters.”

  “She needs to be home with me.” Monica crossed her arms in front of herself, her determined stance causing Ethan to return to his full height. “Nobody here will love her the way I love her.”

  “Of course you love her. But are we just going to pretend that that incident in the car didn’t just happen? She was terrified, Monica. Hell, you were terrified.”

  “Only because I was afraid of how it might affect Trina,” she mumbled.

  Ethan’s sigh was heavy as he ran a hand through his hair. “Man, Trina was the only one of us who kept her cool. Even I reverted to my hostage extraction training and was about to jump across the bench seat and haul Gran against me to keep her from hurting herself.”

  “Mija, look, they have dance classes here.” Gran pointed to something on the five-by-five-foot activity calendar on the wall. Geez, everything was written in such big letters around here. “It’s called Music and Motion and it starts after dinner.”

  “Actually—” Nicole pushed a purple strand of hair behind her ear “—our usual dance teacher who leads that class just had hip surgery and we don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  “I could teach the class,” Gran offered. Then she did a hop shuffle followed by a double brush-back in her tap shoes to prove it.

  “You certainly could teach it,” Nicole replied with a bright smile, as though she was perfectly accustomed to indulging irrational people in their false delusions. Monica immediately pegged the woman for a science fiction reader. “I bet the residents would adore having a sub for the usual teacher. But I should warn you, Mrs. Alvarez. Many of your students aren’t quite as mobile as you. Some might even need to stay in the chairs and just clap along.”

  Wait. What? They were actually going to let her grandmother teach a dance class? This could go wrong on so many levels.

  “Um, I don’t want to be a party pooper here or anything, but I’m supposed to go to a sleepover at Kayla Patrelli’s house tonight,” Trina said in a low voice meant just for her father. However, Monica was so on edge from the car ride there and the tour that was now taking way longer than she’d anticipated, that her senses were incredibly heightened, especially her hearing. “I’ve never been to one before and we’re supposed to be at her family’s restaurant at four o’clock ’cause her mom is gonna let us make our own pizzas.”

  “I can drive you back to Sugar Falls, Trina, and then return for Monica and Gran later.” Ethan was being more than accommodating and Monica had to wonder if he was just trying to escape the crazy again. Was he worried that Gran would have a meltdown if they told her she couldn’t go to the dance class?

  “That’ll never work, mijo,” Gran told Ethan. “The St. Patrick’s Day Dance starts at seven tonight and you promised you’d take my granddaughter. I can just stay here at the hotel after I teach my class. That way you two can go on your date and have the night to yourselves.”

  “Oh, Gran, no.” Monica gulped and her cheeks burned in mortification. “I’m not going on a date with—” She stopped when she saw the confusion filling her grandmother’s eyes. She didn’t need a repeat of what happened an hour ago on the ride there. “I mean, it’s not a hotel. It’s a....” She looked at Nicole for some help.

  “You know, oftentimes, we have potential residents stay overnight. Sort of like a trial run. Mrs. Alvarez would be welcome to stay here tonight to try us out.”

  “Did you know that when I was living in Hollywood, a group of us girls auditioned to be dancers on a cruise ship?” Gran’s eyes went bright and her smile was wide, making Monica hope this story would prove to be a happy distraction. “First-class meals included and we could travel the world while entertaining the guests and putting on shows. I was the only one who got a callback and my friend Darla was so jealous that I got hired and she didn’t.”

  “I don’t remember you ever mentioning working on a cruise ship, Gran,” Monica said, used to these little detours and scrambling to navigate them back to the current issue at hand. Or in this case, avoid the current issue at hand, which was Monica going out with Ethan. Alone.

  “Well, right before we set sail, I found out I was pregnant with your dad. I married your grandpa, and that was the end of that.” Gran made a tsking sound and shook her head. “Aw, but you should have seen that ship, mija. It was so big and fancy. Kind of like this hotel.”

  Oh boy. The pleading look on the older woman’s face clued Monica into the fact that this story wasn’t just a diversion. Gran actually thought she would be reliving her youth. How could Monica deny her grandmother the opportunity?

  Ethan must’ve sensed her train of thought because he leaned in again and said, “It’s only one night.”

  * * *

  After Ethan dropped Trina off at Patrelli’s Italian Restaurant, he walked to his apartment to get ready for his first date with Monica.

  Well, it wasn’t exactly a date. At least, not the kind Ethan had in mind when he’d first decided he’d wanted to ask Monica out all those months ago. On the way home from Legacy Village, she’d tried to tell him that they didn’t need to go to the St. Patrick’s Day Dance, but Trina had insisted that Gran would find out if they didn’t go and would be very disappointed. Just like they’d all been disappointed to find out that the picnic basket Gran had packed contained only pickles.

  What did one even wear to a St. Patrick’s Day party, anyway? Besides green? The only thing he really knew about the holiday was that it involved corned beef and copious amounts of green beer. In fact, he’d always thought the celebrations were just an excuse to get drunk. And he definitely couldn’t do that tonight. When Monica had suggested she meet him at the VFW hall, he’d made a joke about being the designated driver then told her he’d pick her up at seven.

  Standing on her front step, Ethan’s chest grew heavy with each knock. He refused to believe he was nervous because of her. He never used to get nervous around women. But the sight of Monica opening the door made him catch his breath. She was wearing a green, silky dress that hit just below her thighs. Her tan cowboy boots drew even more attention to her long, sexy legs.

  She must’ve caught him staring, because she tugged at the ruffled hem of her dress. “Is it too short? Maybe I should go back inside and change.”

  “No, it’s perfect. Sorry for staring, but I’m used to seeing you in jeans at the café an
d those long, skinny skirts you always have on at the library.” He was also staring because he’d never seen a more incredible set of legs, but saying so out loud would certainly scare her off. “Is it new?”

  Monica grabbed her purse and a denim jacket off the table in the entryway. “No, I’ve had it since I was in high school. Apparently, I’ve grown a bit since then, but it was the only green item of clothing in my closet. You ready to get this over with?”

  “Is going out dancing really going to be a chore for you?” he asked, trying not to sound insulted. It was definitely easier to come across as lighthearted and the life of the party when he had a few drinks in him.

  “Sorry. It’s not you. I’m just not into big crowds and parties and making small talk with everyone who’ll be asking me about Gran.”

  Some people might ask her about Gran, but a few of the bolder ones would likely ask her about where she’d been hiding those legs. He held the truck door open for her. “So we’ll make an appearance. Maybe dance to a song or two so we can honestly tell your grandmother that we participated. Then we’ll take off and you can call and check on things at Legacy Village.”

  Monica ducked her head, but not before he caught the sheepish expression. “I’ve already called twice.”

  “Good. Now I don’t feel so overprotective for already stopping by Patrelli’s to make sure Trina had her phone charger in case she needs to get a hold of me.”

  “Oh my gosh, I can’t even begin to thank Trina for all her help with Gran today, for being so patient and springing into action like that with the music. I owe that girl another trip to the mall.”

  “She’d probably rather have a trip to the bookstore. Or a new e-reader so she doesn’t have to download everything onto her phone.”

  “Hmm.” Monica gave a dreamy smile as she looked out the window. “I can’t even believe she’s the same girl that you brought into the café a few weeks ago. She’s really bloomed since she’s been with you, Ethan.”