Page 99 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
Grandma's table was built for two, maybe three at a push. I set out the porridge, cabbage kimchi from the fridge, seasoned spinach, soy-braised eggs sliced to show the yolks. Rhea perched on the wooden stool grandma kept for guests, chin level with the table edge. Beom-Beom got installed on the windowsill between the plants, good ear facing the table so he could "hear better," according to Rhea.
Grandma started feeding Daniil before he'd even lifted his spoon.
"Eat more. You are too thin for a man your size. Take this whole bowl. No, another scoop. Eat." She was ladling a second helping in before he'd touched the first. "And the egg. Take the egg."
Daniil's mouth did the thing it does when he is trying not to smile. "Thank you, Halmoni."
"Mm." She turned. "You. Try the spinach. Try."
Rhea tried it. Her eyes went wide. "This is so good. I don't like the spicy cabbage, but I like this. And the egg. The yolk is the best part. My brother says I should eat the white part too, but the yolk is the best part."
"The yolk is the best part," grandma agreed solemnly, and Rhea looked vindicated for the first time in her short life.
Then grandma cleared her throat and got that particular gleam in her eye.
"Did Chloe ever tell you," she said, looking directly at Daniil, "about the time she tried to braid my hair?"
"Grandma. No."
"She was four. Four. Climbs up behind me on the couch with her little fat fingers and says, Halmoni, I will braid your hair beautiful. Twenty minutes. Breathing very hard. Then sniffling. Then crying. Real crying. She climbs down. She says, Halmoni, your hair is bad. Your hair will not behave."
Daniil set his spoon down because he couldn't eat and laugh at the same time. Rhea was making a sound halfway between a wheeze and a shriek.
"Your hair was bad," I muttered. "I stand by it."
"And then, when she was twelve. Twelve. She decides she wants the cat to come to church. She zips the cat inside her cardigan. Buttoned up. The cat is in there. We are in the pew, the pastor is preaching, and the cat starts to sing."
"The cat didn't sing."
"The cat sang."
"The cat yowled."
"Aigoo, it sang. The whole congregation turns. Mrs. Han nearly falls out of her seat. The pastor stops talking. Sister Kim, is your granddaughter all right? And this one just opens the bottom button of her cardigan and the cat walks down the aisle like he is going to take communion."
Rhea was lying sideways on her stool laughing. Daniil's eyes had gone bright in a way I rarely got to see, and he kept glancing at me through it all like he was filing every detail into a place he meant to keep.
"You've told these at every dinner table for twenty years."
"I will tell them for twenty more."
Toward the end of the meal, Daniil set his chopsticks down very carefully across the rim of his bowl. He looked at me a moment. Then at grandma.
"I am lucky to have an angel by my side," he said, "even if I do not deserve her."
The room got quiet, even Rhea, in that quick instinctive way kids do when the adults shift gear.
Grandma watched him. She didn't blink. She didn't soften and she didn't harden. She just watched him the way she watches things that matter. Then she nodded. Once. Small and final.
"Mm."
That was all. But I knew what it meant.
After we cleared the table, grandma announced that the back garden needed cleaning up before the first hard frost, and she was going to do it herself.
"You're not doing it yourself," I said.
"I have been doing it myself for thirty years."
