Chapter Twelve
Twelve
Simon
Two months. Two months was nothing. I’d survived years working in an industry that bored me into a catatonic stupor on a daily basis. Two months with the sexy Hannah Spencer and her lovable horse-dog would be a snap—or so I kept telling myself.
Our gazes met and held for a heartbeat or two.
She was right. She’d been right all along.
There had to be a reason that our grandfathers had chosen us to inherit the house and if it was to belatedly share their relationship with us then so be it.
For two months, I could support her in her quest and maybe it would help me find some closure, too.
After we helped Roland and Zach load up the remnants of the tree into the back of Zach’s pickup, we boarded up the smashed windowpanes with plywood and cleaned the bedroom of broken glass. Dude was banished to the yard, where he pounced and rolled in the high grass, having the time of his life.
We were sweaty and sticky and I was certain I smelled like something Dude would have liked to roll in when Hannah opened the top drawer of the dresser.
She pressed her hand to her chest and sighed.
I glanced over her shoulder to see what she’d found.
It was a very tidy storage box of cuff links and tie clips, sorted by size and shape.
They clearly meant something to Hannah as her eyes filled with tears. “These belonged to Pops; he was a television reporter in Providence for years.”
“Really?” I wondered if that was why she’d become a journalist.
“He was the anchorman, reporting every night at five o’clock and eleven o’clock,” she said.
“When I was little, I used to think he lived inside the television and would pop out to visit us before going back to his ‘house.’ My mom said she frequently found me asking for Pops to come out of the television when it was off.”
She reached in and picked up a set of cuff links.
They were circular mother-of-pearl set in silver.
Classy. I couldn’t help but recall how Gramps even at the height of his success had always worn his dress shirts unbuttoned at the collar and with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the ropy muscles of his forearms. I don’t think he’d ever worn a set of cuff links in his life.
It made me wonder how he and Hannah’s grandfather had found each other.
I glanced around the bedroom, taking in the utilitarian furniture.
I hadn’t had a chance to really examine it since I’d arrived but now that I was taking it in, I noted that it didn’t appear to be lived in.
There were no photos or knickknacks. Very different from the living room downstairs.
I decided to check out the other bedroom.
There were sheets thrown over the furniture as if the last person to leave knew he wasn’t coming back.
Hannah had said Pops passed away a month ago.
Gramps had died three months prior. I felt an ominous sinking in the pit of my stomach.
How had Pops known he wouldn’t be back? Had he been sick like Gramps?
Or had he been too heartbroken to be here without Gramps and decided to close it up for good?
I supposed Vincent had been instructed to wait until both men had passed to inform us about our inheritance.
It struck me then that the men had died three months apart.
I’d heard of partners who lived only a few months after their loved one passed away.
Had Gramps and Pops been that deeply in love?
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that when I had assumed Granny had been the love of Gramps’s life.
The first stirrings of real curiosity began to unfurl inside of me and I glanced around the bedroom, realizing this had likely been their shared space.
I ripped the sheets off the furniture. The matching side tables had stacks of books on them, the one on the left had a small white-noise machine, while the one on the right had a pair of reader’s glasses.
I crossed to the side table and picked up the glasses.
They were big blocky black-framed nerd glasses.
A laugh burst out of me. These belonged to Gramps.
How many times had I seen him push these very glasses up his nose while ordering from a restaurant menu?
The laugh turned into a hiccup and I felt my throat get tight.
“O’Malley? You okay?” Hannah appeared at my side. Her hand rested lightly on my forearm as if she was trying to reassure me with her presence while not intruding on my moment of grief.
I cleared my throat. “I’m fine.” I held the readers up. “Your grandfather was suave mother-of-pearl cuff links while mine was ugly science dork glasses.”
Hannah smiled. It was small and sad and pulled at my heartstrings, filling me with an unfamiliar feeling of tenderness. Her eyes still held a sheen of tears and I gave in to the inexplicable urge to give her a side hug and offer her comfort.
To my surprise, she nestled closer and said, “This is going to be hard.”
“We’ll get through it.” My voice was gruff when I added, “Together.”
She squeezed me tight and I caught my breath at the uncalculated affection.
I wasn’t used to someone reaching for me without having a hand on my wallet at the same time.
The coconut-lime scent of her hair was intoxicating and she fit up against my side as if she were built for just that specific spot.
I found myself leaning into her softness and it soothed me.
“Despite your lack of skills in the bat-removal department, I’m glad you’re here, O’Malley.
” Her voice was teasing but I knew she was feeling the same way I was.
Relieved to have someone to go through the house with.
If reading glasses and cuff links were this triggering, I could only imagine what the rest of it would be like.
“The bat caught a ride in my hair,” I reminded her. I suspected she was teasing to keep the emotions light and I was 100 percent on board with that. “I think that makes my bat-removal skills above reproach.”
“Meh.” She glanced up at me with a glint in her eyes.
When she let me go, I had the craziest urge to pull her back up against my side.
I didn’t. Instead, I just watched her go, thinking I’d experienced more emotions in the past two days spent with her than I had in years.
A flicker of unease hit me low and deep but I shook it off.
This was just for two months. I could keep my feelings in check and my hands to myself for less than sixty days.
“You want to use a 20-25 test line when fishing,” Luke said. “Also go for nylon monofilament.”
This was Luke’s answer to my abysmal attempts at fishing. Had it really been over a week since I’d stood on Gramps’s dock and cast my line before being dunked by Dude? I glanced around the backyard of the cottage where Monica and Davis Fisk were in the thick of hosting the neighborhood cookout.
With three kids under the age of seven, they had the look of bemused parents who had become adept at controlled chaos.
The grill was blazing out hot dogs and hamburgers to order, the smoker had brisket, and a picnic table was laden with offerings from the rest of the neighborhood, which included potato salad, corn bread, and other assorted side dishes.
A wild pack of children, including the Fisks’ three, were running around the lawn in a game of chase that had no defined rules, judging by the arguments that kept breaking out.
I had a cold beer in one hand and stood silently while I was schooled by Luke and three other men who lived on the Split—as they called it—in the ways of OBX fishing.
I watched Hannah move through the crowd with Bebe, meeting and greeting everyone as if she’d lived there for years instead of a little over a week.
I marveled at her ease. She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear as the summer breeze tugged it loose from the ponytail at the nape of her neck while she laughed at something one of the kids said.
She wore a pale pink sundress with tiny strawberries on it paired with a beat-up pair of white Converse sneakers.
When the little girl started spinning with her arms flung wide, Hannah did, too.
Because of course she did. I couldn’t take my eyes off the way her skirt flared and how she tilted her head up toward the sun as if inviting its warmth into her soul.
As I watched, Dude bounded toward Hannah as if he wanted in on the game. She stopped spinning and bent over to give him a hug. I fully expected little hearts to stream out of his eyes. Satisfied, Dude hurried back to his new friend.
Dude had insisted on coming with us to the barbecue and made a new bestie in Frank, Bebe and Luke’s black pug.
The sight of the harlequin Great Dane and the pug, who wasn’t much bigger than Dude’s paw, sacked out in the grass while the children crawled all over them was a sight.
Dude rolled onto his back so he was belly-up while he basked in the attention as if he was utterly neglected at home.
On the walk over, Hannah and I had agreed that this was an opportunity to do grandfather recon, as in, we were supposed to ask the other guests what they knew about our grandfathers so that we could get a sense of their life here together.
Problem was, I had no idea how to initiate that sort of candid conversation.
I was a guy. Conversationally, my areas of expertise were sports, cars, hobbies like fishing, and technology.
Relationship stuff, including the familial, didn’t even make the top ten, possibly top twenty.
I’d rather talk about bowel movements than delve into feelings.
Still, I had promised Hannah I would try.
“My Gramps loved a day of fishing.” I glanced at the men around me, feeling as if I were baiting my hook.
“I’ll say he did,” Luke agreed. He nudged Davis Fisk, who was taking a well-earned break from the grill. “Remember when he and Billy caught all of that flounder?”
“Do I? I love flounder as much as the next guy but I started hiding when I saw them coming to my door with a bag. You just knew it was going to be more flounder.”
“Billy was a fisherman, too?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation toward the grandfathers without being too obvious.
“Oh, yeah, they were real competitive about it,” Davis said. “Billy told me it went back to the first day they met at the Split.”
“They met here?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice. I had never heard of Gramps traveling to this tiny peninsula before he bought his “fishing getaway” twenty years ago.
Davis and Luke exchanged a look as if they weren’t sure how well I would handle talking about my recently deceased grandfather. I wanted to say it was fine and that they could tell me anything but judging by the pang of hurt that was twanging in my chest, that would be a lie.
“He didn’t say much else about it.” Davis looked apologetic. “Other than they were teenagers and met when Billy crowded Bobby out of his favorite fishing spot.”
I nodded, trying to look as if this news didn’t rock me to my core.
It totally did and I wasn’t sure I had a good enough poker face to not let it show.
Gramps had met Pops—or as the locals knew them, Bobby had met Billy—as teenagers.
I took a very long swallow of my beer, trying to play it cool when what I really wanted to do was run across the lawn and grab Hannah and tell her what I had just learned.
This was news and I desperately wanted to be the one to tell her and hear her opinion about it, but I didn’t move.
I wanted to hold on to this tidbit and tell her when it was just the two of us.
I watched as she took a seat with Bebe and a few other women. When her gaze met mine, I lifted my beer bottle to her. She lifted her fork in return, and I smiled. Hannah’s returning grin enveloped me in the shared amusement, making an unfamiliar feeling of contentment fill my chest.
Wanting to imprint the moment on my mind, I glanced up at the bright blue sky and felt the warm ocean breeze ruffle my hair.
I heard Dude and Frank, snuffling and snorting as they rolled in the grass.
I glanced around at the clusters of friends and neighbors and felt a sense of belonging as if I was welcome, even encouraged, to take up space in this place.
I realized I hadn’t felt this level of acceptance since my days in art school.
It was one of those precious life moments where I wasn’t stressed or angry or feeling overwhelmed.
If I could have lived in it forever, I would have.
Although Davis and Monica likely would have frowned upon me taking up residence in their backyard.
Realizing the conversation had moved on without me, I focused my attention on the men, trying to figure out what they were talking about.
I was infinitely relieved when Roland joined our group with some very strong opinions about braided lines versus nylon filament while I finished my beer and pondered what I’d learned.