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Of course she was proud of Jeff’s boys. That was a grandmother’s job, to be proud of your grandchildren. And she told them so whenever she got the chance. Whenever Alan got back from one of his solo space jaunts, having trusted his gut and his natural ability and done his best, Grandma Tracy told him how proud she was.
Whenever Virgil and Gordon got back from a particularly grueling rescue, high on adrenaline and laughing and wrestling and breaking off in the middle of shoving and punching each other to scoop her into warm embraces and chatter about how well it had gone, she listened and nodded appreciatively at the right moments, and again, told her boys just how proud she was.
Whenever John or Scott made a particularly tough call, Grandma Tracy was there, letting them know that whichever way it went, she was proud, would always be proud of them.
But honestly, there were lies of omission being told, when she told the boys how proud she was. Because she was prouder of Alan when he was bent over his schoolwork, working out the only problems that should have troubled a boy his age, quadratic equations and calculus. She was proudest of him when he was just being himself, lanky and awkward and still halfway a child.
She was prouder of Gordon when she watched him swim laps of the pool, just for the love of it, not to keep himself in peak physical condition for when people would need him, but just because it made him happy. When Gordon grinned and cracked jokes and pranked his brothers, she was prouder of him than she ever said.
When Virgil slipped sideways out of his role as the family rock, and just allowed himself to be, to indulge in those secret, soft passions, the music and the painting and the quietude of his actual personality. When Virgil was vulnerable and sensitive and honest with her about how much heworried about his brothers. That made her prouder than she could say, when the middle child dropped the brave face.
She didn’t see John nearly as often as she wished she did, but more than anything she was proud of his unaugmented brilliance, when John disconnected and descended and became part of the world again. When he got to listen to his family in person, with his dry wit and his sharp observations, his ability to get on Brains’ level, to draw their sixth, ersatz brother into the family proper.
She was proudest of Scott when she got to see him being proud of the same things she was, the real things, the things that mattered. Not the things that the boys did, but the things that they were. When she shared a secret glance over at the eldest and caught him grinning back at her, about Alan, about Gordon, about Virgil or John. Grandma Tracy swells with pride, when she knows that Scott sees what she sees, and knows how it’s important.
And she’s proud of her own son, of Jeff, even missing as he is. She’s never given up hope. She’s proud of what he’s made, of what he’s done for the world, the gift he’s given in the form of his children, with their righteousness and their loyalty. But she wonders, as she lies about what she’s proud of on her absent son’s behalf, if Jeff was prouder of who his boys are, or of what he made them.