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they could be twins.
    Although I was drawn to watch every move they made, I was very aware of the way my grandmother was studying me, probably trying to determine if what I saw and heard was influencing me badly. That was always her concern whenever I went anywhere with her and my grandfather. What effect would it have on me? It was as if she believed I could look at something for only a few moments or overhear some conversation and immediately turn into some evil creature.
    So I shifted my gaze back to the fake flowers and then sipped my lemonade. My grandfather started to talk about some of the nicer restaurants he had gone to when he was a young man in business college. He described foods I’d never heard of, much less tasted. We never had lobster or clams or oysters. Grandmother Myra was always very careful about her food budget. I think the truth was that she didn’t know how to prepare seafood.
    The waiter brought us our salads, and we began to eat.
    “How you could afford to go to a restaurant while you were attending college is a mystery to me,” Grandmother Myra told him.
    “It wasn’t easy,” he said, smiling. She looked at him with such disapproval he stopped smiling immediately and changed the subject to the new development he saw being done in the area.
    “All this modernizing,” Grandmother Myra said. “For what? Things were good as they were. All it’s doing is bringing in too many people.”
    “Have to improve and build your economy,” Grandfather Prescott said. On this, he wasn’t going to back down. Whenever she saw there was a topic he wouldn’t avoid, she simply grew quiet or directed her attention elsewhere. Right now, she was criticizing the way some of the waiters and waitresses served food.
    “I see how their fingers touch the potatoes or the pasta,” she said.
    I looked again at the family who had drawn my attention when they entered. They were waiting for a table, and the one they were brought to was only two tables from us. When they were seated, the young man was facing me. After their waiter took their drink orders, he looked at the menu, but then his gaze shifted toward me, and I quickly looked away.
    Our food was brought to our table, and I tried to concentrate only on that while Grandmother Myra went through her litany of complaints about it all. Nothing was made the way it should be, the way she would have made it. She couldn’t believe it was clean enough. There was dust under the table. Eating out never was worth the money.
    “It’s Elle’s birthday celebration,” my grandfather said softly.
    “I could have made her a better dinner.”
    “Tomorrow night,” he replied.
    She pursed her lips the way she always did when her thoughts bounced around in her head and were shut down before getting to her tongue. I thought my food tasted better than what she would do with a chicken dish, but I kept that to myself and even tried not to look as if I was enjoying it so much. When I ventured to gaze toward the young man again, I saw he was still looking at me, with a small smile on his lips as if something about me amused him. Despite my attempts to avoid any response, I could feel my face heat up.
    “What’s wrong?” Grandmother Myra asked immediately. “You look flushed.”
    I shook my head. “I think there’s something too spicy in mine,” I offered.
    “See?” she said, turning on my grandfather. “They’re sloppy about how they prepare. They put in too much salt, for sure.”
    He didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes locked on my food. Even though I was really enjoying it, my excuse for the blush that had come over me forced me to leave the remaining portion. There were tears in my eyes, but they weren’t from any hot spice.
    “Maybe we should order her something else,” my grandfather said. He started to raise his hand to catch our waiter’s attention, but she stopped him.
    “She’s eaten enough,” she said.
    “Elle?” he asked.
    “I’m fine,