Finalist: 2024 Short Story Prize
When Grant knocks over the paper bag on the kitchen counter, a spider skitters out: seed-sized body, glittering long legs, glint of green and gold as it ducks back into the bag with the THC gummies, which are the colors of precious things: ruby, sapphire, jade.
“Weed spider?” Riley ruffles the bag and the spider twitches back out across the counter. She scoops it in a plastic cup, steps outside, tosses it onto the lawn. “There, Peepaw. Now it won’t be laying eggs in your candies.”
Leaning on his cane, Grant examines the bag, ponders the gummies, wonders what webs the spider might’ve woven over them: blood orange, crystalline blue, salmon pink. He winces, reaches for the counter, licks his lower lip, wetting it with his saliva’s Lifesaver Wint-O-Green. “Thanks, Riles. Glad you’re not still scared of them.”
“The hairy gnarly ones, sure, but not one like that.” She looks at the bag. “Wonder how long it’s been in there?”
“Never seen it before.” He leans away from the counter, tests putting weight on his bad leg, winces again. “Guess the dispensary guy didn’t, either.”
Riley helps him to the couch. She ruffles his hair as she looks out the window, maybe toward the area of the lawn where the spider’s now roaming. “Listen, Peepaw, we’ve got to get you to PT. It’s the only way your knee’s gonna get better.”
*
Grant remembers her as a four year-old, fruit cereal stuck to her cheeks, imaginary worlds with silver spacemen, pink ponies with crayoned sunglasses, Easter eggs hidden in the poison ivy. How is she old enough now to handle her own spiders, step in for her mom—who’s suddenly working longer hours—to take him to PT, support him as he canes his way up the walkway?
“I don’t understand why you don’t want to go. They have such a nice facility.”
“Because it fucking hurts,” Grant says. “Pardon my language, Riles.”
“No worries.” She helps him into the passenger’s seat. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. Even from some of our professors.”
The physical therapist directs Grant through his exercises, measures his progress, at the end massages his leg, bends it this way and that, exhorts him to ignore the pain, reminds him that scar tissue is their enemy. In the restroom on his way out, Grant takes two plastic-wrapped gummies from his pocket, pops them in his mouth, chews and swallows before he goes out to meet his granddaughter in the waiting room.
They stop at Super Scoops on their way home. Riley orders their sundaes while Grant sits at a table outside under an umbrella, his cane across his lap.
“Looky here,” she says when she comes out. “Hot fudge for both of us.”
He leans his cane against the chair, reaches for his spoon, looks at her with wide eyes. “How did you get so grown-up?”
“You asked me that this morning, Peepaw.”
He swirls his ice cream, caramel macchiato and pumpkin spice. “Anyway, it’s nice of you to sub in for your mom.” He pictures Sarah, his only child, now irretrievably turned against him: thinning hair, bent shoulders, scornful mouth lipsticked pale pink. “I know she’s had enough of me already.”
Riley picks up a maraschino cherry by the stem, wrinkles her nose, drops it on a napkin. “She’s just working extra shifts, like I said.”
“All of a sudden.”
“She’s tired.” She licks chocolate off her spoon. “You better eat your ice cream before it melts.” She watches as he takes a big bite. “Mom would say the same thing. Don’t worry, I’m sure her schedule will open up soon.”
“I believe you.”
The sun’s getting hot, even under the umbrella. Grant’s starting to feel the gummies. Each mouthful of ice cream—cinnamon, coffee, cloves—tastes better than the last. “I’m remembering when you were little,” he says. “You always had something to show me.”
“Kids love attention.”
“Like that stuffed porcupine with a purple heart around its mouth. I think you kissed it with your first lipstick.”
“Eww, gross.”
“Or gymnastics moves. Cartwheels, handstands, all that.” His mind’s going liquid, caramel-macchiato melting into a sidewalk. “You were always calling out for me, even when I was right there.”
*
Riley opens his exercise log on the dining room table, flips through. “Are you doing any of these on your own?”
Grant rubs his thigh. “A little.”
“Just not recording them, then? What about your meds? Mom said she printed out a schedule so you wouldn’t miss anything.”
“Guess I misplaced that at some point.”
“I remember when me and Mom used to come here after work.” She closes the log. “Meemaw used to make us oatmeal for dinner.”
“Wasn’t too long after your dad ditched, I think. Those were nice visits.”
“We ate in the living room. You’d be sitting in your recliner, smelling like gas or motor oil or whatever. Talking about transmissions and all that.” She shakes her head. “Lube jobs. In one of your old Grant’s Auto Shop hats.”
“Such a long time ago.” He looks out the window, imagines the spider on the lawn, wonders if it’s multiplying; remembers Riley and her mom bawling their eyes out when he called to tell them he’d found Meemaw collapsed in the bathroom, it was a stroke, they couldn’t revive her. Could they please come to the hospital and be with him?
“You still have any of those hats around?”
He shifts his weight. “Nah, I burned ‘em.”
“Wow, that’s pretty harsh.”
“I don’t wanna think about that stuff anymore.” He slips his hand in his pocket, feels for more gummies. “You understand that, don’t you, Riles?”
*
“The first thing to go when I get into a depression,” Riley says, “I stop brushing my teeth.” Grant’s lying on the couch; Riley’s kneeling beside him, massaging his leg. “So when I get up and going, I make sure I floss like three times a day, to make up for it.” She presses lightly with her palms. “How’s that, Peepaw? The doc said we can’t let the scar tissue build up.”
“The PT said the same thing.” He watches her reach for the ice pack, position it on his knee. “And how’s college going?”
She pats his leg, stands, shifts over to the chair. “Definitely better the third year. Now I know when to put in the work.”
“Shouldn’t you always be putting in the work?”
“Work smartly, not hardly, isn’t that the saying?” She laughs, grabs her energy drink from the coffee table. “The rest of the time you enjoy your life.” She takes a big swig. “You know all about that, Peepaw.”
“So what does this therapist help you with, when you go? What does she tell you?”
“Oh, you know.” She drains the rest of the drink, leaving a chemical orange mustache on her upper lip, which she licks away. “Just be the person I want to be.”
*
It’s early evening, Riley’s pulled the shades, they’ve been sipping gin and juice. Red-cheeked Riley comes into the living room with fried eggs on a saucer. “Anyway, my last boyfriend was a fuckup. He had all these hilarious stories about robbing his mom’s purse to pay for pills. But then he started fucking robbing me.” She sets the saucer on the coffee table beside their empty glasses, looks at the couch, where Grant’s still lying. “Mom wasn’t too happy with that, you know how she gets.”
“I think she’s doing the best she can, Riles.” Grant closes his eyes, winces, sees Sarah in lecture mode, hair pinned in a bun, sleeves rolled up, hands red from washing a pile of his dishes. “You’re only sixty-eight years-old, Dad, you can’t give up yet. And I won’t mother you, understand? I can’t be the only adult here.”
“She said I better get a job,” Riley goes on. “But this economy is too shitty.”
“How do you know so much about everything?” With a waved hand Grant tries to indicate all of it: dishonesty, substances, the struggles of family and employment, the unavoidable hopelessness of all things. He’s melting away pleasantly, bobbing on a Tanqueray-THC wave. “You’re only twenty.”
“Twenty-one,” she corrects him. “It’s the culture. It’s the air we breathe.” She goes back to the kitchen, returns with the paper bag, opens it in her lap, peers inside. “So what do you have here, Peepaw?” She takes out lime, raspberry, cherry, shows them to him in her palm.
“They’re all good.” In the chair beside him his granddaughter looks older than seems proper, more wrinkles around her eyes, more like her mom every day. “Try any you want,” he tells her. Even while looking at her he’s not quite able to lift his head from the couch; glittery lemon-lime webs hold him in place, sticky strands of crystal sweetness, spun sugar. “Try them all.”
Author: Timothy Boudreau lives in northern New Hampshire with his wife, Judy. His novel All We Knew Were Our Hearts is due out from ELJ Editions in 2026. He is an editor at The Loveliest Review. Find him on BlueSky and Twitter at @tcboudreau and at timothyboudreau.com.