Chapter 12 #2
“She’s not too far outside the post. She lives in a trailer park a few miles away actually.
” Kurt swigged his root beer, then added, “She left my grandparents’ house when she turned eighteen.
I was a little over a year old. To hear her talk, you wouldn’t know it, but my grandparents were the ones to raise me.
Back then, she pretty much came and went as she pleased. At least that’s how I remember it.”
Kelsey wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t say it like he wanted sympathy, but she’d put the pieces together about the cell phone having been his grandmother’s.
If his grandmother had been more involved in raising him than his own mom, her passing had to be especially hard.
“I’m really sorry about your grandmother. ”
“Me too,” he said, looking at the house across the road.
Two carpenters were there today, and somewhere inside the house, a table saw kept going off.
“Nobody was expecting it. She was in her late sixties but healthy as can be. She was in the grocery store when it happened. She fell and hit her head, but it was a stroke that caused it.”
If they were closer, Kelsey would’ve put her hand on his shoulder. Instead, she busied herself by breaking off a piece of her pretzel stick.
“She was an amazing woman,” Kurt continued, keeping his focus on the house across the street.
“Small in size, lots smaller than my mom even, but she was big in spirit. She was born in Mexico and came from money—loads of it, to hear her tell it. Her father was very proud and traditional and wanted to keep all the money and property in his family line. When she was eighteen, she found out he wanted to marry her off to her third cousin. While the relationship was distant enough not to have any genetic risk associated with it, they’d been raised in the same extended family and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
“She and her father were having big rows about it, so he sent her on vacation with her mother and aunt to a beach in Baja, California, in hopes she’d cool down.
That was when she met my grandfather. He was a few years older and stationed down in Texas back then.
He was on leave and vacationing with his buddies.
They eloped after meeting each other three times. She never went home.”
As this last part settled in, Kurt stroked Mr. Longtail, who clearly loved having his belly rubbed. Kelsey could practically feel the cat’s deep, thrumming purr reverberating in her chest.
“Not even for vacation?” she asked. The idea of never seeing her own mom, dad, or brothers again was almost unfathomable.
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “She reached out to them after my mother was born, but her father made it clear she’d been excommunicated.
To hear her tell it, my very stubborn and set-in-his-ways grandfather was a pussycat compared to her dad.
However, a year or so before I enlisted, she got a letter from her hometown in Mexico.
I don’t think she ever opened it. At least if she did, it was something she never shared.
She said sometimes too much water can pass under a bridge. ”
“Wow. I can’t imagine having my family turning against me because of who I wanted to marry, but I don’t have that kind of heritage either. At least she handled it okay. She sounds like an amazing person.”
“She was the best.” Kurt rolled the side of his empty bottle along the edge of his chair.
“She really was. She had endless patience with me, and my mother wasn’t kidding about the ADHD.
My grandmother was a saint to put up with all she did.
I started a garage fire when I was ten that forced us to stay in a hotel for a month and could’ve been much worse.
Then, when I was twelve, I got caught trying to drive my grandfather’s old truck off post property.
If it had just been up to my grandfather, I’d have gotten spanked more times than I could count. ”
Kelsey grimaced. “I hope that’s a figure of speech.”
Kurt gave her one of the half smiles she was starting to love. “Let’s go with that. Then I became a teenager, and the trouble really started. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother and for the chances I had to work with Rob and his dogs, I’d probably have ended up in juvie.”
“You don’t seem anything like that now.” She held out the bag, offering him another pretzel. The tips of their fingers touched as he took one, giving Kelsey an electric jolt. Yep, she was definitely crushing hard. Learning more about him wasn’t helping extinguish those flames either.
Over to the west, it was starting to cloud up and turn gray.
The rest of the sky was still blue and sunny.
She wondered how many hours they had before the storm hit and what kind of anxiety it might stir up in the dogs.
She was opening her mouth to ask if they should start the evening feeding rounds early when she spotted his grandfather’s truck coming down the street.
This time, there was only one person in the cab.
“Looks like it’s only your grandfather this time,” Kelsey said, nodding toward the street.
The slightest hint of a frown appeared on Kurt’s face. He set his bottle on the porch floor and lifted a perturbed Mr. Longtail off his lap. The cat meowed and twitched his tail at having been disturbed, then strode to the center of the top step and started licking his long fur.
“As long as you’re good with it, while you guys talk, I can switch out the dogs in the runs—after I discover who’s newly named.
” Offering him a smile, Kelsey made a show of crossing a finger over her heart.
“And I promise to handle only the green betas whose names I know you’re going to love using very soon. ”
He chuckled and brushed off his pants. “Sounds good. Yell if you need me.”
After waving to Kurt’s grandfather as he pulled into the circular drive, Kelsey headed inside. She couldn’t be sure, but this morning she’d gotten a strong sense that Kurt’s grandfather was holding something back.