(Sean's POV)
The cake is cut. Plates cleared. Someone starts coffee. I push my chair back, and Grandmother's hand is already on my arm — not asking, steering — pulling me up before I can settle into the excuse of another glass of wine.
The garden door opens and the night air hits my face like a correction. Cold, sobering, the kind that reminds me I had two glasses at dinner and called it restraint.
Hedges loom on either side. Narrow gravel path. One lamp by the stone bench. Grandmother's grip is firm on my arm — not an old woman needing support. A woman steering.
She stops by her roses. Dead this time of year — bare canes, thorns, the brown fists of hips nobody pruned. She doesn't let go.
"You defended her tonight."
"They were out of line."
She squeezes. Not hard — just enough to ha
