Chapter 4
Nana knew better than to raise her voice, so she agreed with their ridiculous demands while her usually so-warm eyes shot lightning bolts at them. And when they left, she stomped into the garden and pulled weeds so furiously, she splattered soil all over me and herself, muttering between clenched teeth.
I heard her anyway.
“Nana?” I asked after she calmed down. “If Mother has a stick up her butt, can’t Father take it out? He operates on sick people.”
That made Nana splutter out a cackling laughter, and tears leak from her eyes. “Hannes, my boy, your father isn’t a butt doctor, he repairs people’s hearts.” Then she bribed me with extra sweet hot chocolate and three cookies as she made me promise to never repeat what we’d talked about to my parents.
To this day, twenty years later, I still haven’t told them.