Chapter Thirteen #3
“It’s understandable. You would have been adorable in a cute little ballerina tutu–style dress and a circle of flowers on your head.”
“Are you making fun of me, O’Malley?” I fumed.
“No, never that.” He shook his head with a bogus look of innocence.
“You are,” I snapped. “That’s fine. I get it.
It probably seems irrational that I am devastated that Pops left me out of one of the most important days of his life and not just that, but he never mentioned meeting your grandfather or falling in love or sharing his life with someone for two decades—someone he loved enough to marry. ”
“It doesn’t seem irrational and I’m sorry I teased you,” Simon said.
His voice was gentle, which only annoyed me even more.
“I’m not trying to make light of your feelings, but I may have a different perspective on things because of what I learned tonight.
Although, given how you’re feeling, now might not be the best time to share it with you. ”
“Oh, no, go ahead,” I said. “I can’t possibly feel any more shut out of Pops’s life than I do now.”
An expression of doubt flickered over Simon’s face. “All right. According to Davis, Gramps and Pops met here.”
I nodded. “Well, that makes sense. They were both fishermen, after all. Was it on a charter boat or something?”
Simon shook his head. “No, it was when they were teenagers.”
I felt my jaw drop just a bit before I asked, “What? How? When?”
Simon shrugged. “Davis told me that Gramps told him he met Pops when they were teenagers and they got into a tussle over the same fishing spot.”
I blinked. They’d met as teenagers? I wasn’t sure what this meant. Had Pops and Gramps been in love back then? Given Pops’s age, it must have been in the ’60s before he went to college, before he became a reporter, before he met and married Nana.
Nana! Had she known? Was this why they divorced? Did she know that Pops had fallen in love and remarried? And those summer trips we took here when I was a kid, was Pops looking for his long-lost love?
“I am reeling.” I leaned forward and clasped my head in my hands. “No pun intended.”
“I know the feeling.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Simon lift his arm, and after a slight hesitation, he put his hand on my back as if to steady me.
I welcomed the comforting touch. “I almost grabbed you at the picnic and told you, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything you might discover and I have to say, you crushed it, reporter lady. ”
“I think your intel is more compelling than mine,” I said. “Mine just confirms that they were in love. We knew that. But to discover that they’d met as young men? That’s the stuff headlines are made of. Do you think they kept in touch over the years?”
“I have no idea.” Simon removed his hand from my back and I immediately missed his touch. He glanced around the room. “If they did, I imagine there must be evidence of it somewhere in the house. Maybe we’ll find something when we start going through their things.”
I frowned. “You say ‘we’ but I feel like you mean ‘me,’ as in I’m going to be doing the searching. Why don’t you seem as upset as I am about being excluded from their life?”
“Whoa, hold up there. You don’t know anything about me or my relationship with Gramps,” he countered.
“So, tell me then,” I challenged him.
He looked uncomfortable as if he hadn’t expected me to call him out. Seriously? Of course I was going to ask for specifics.
“Gramps was a crotchety, cranky, surly old duff who, despite not being terribly fond of his fellow man, never missed any of the big moments of my life, which is more than I can say for…well…it doesn’t matter.”
Although clearly it did.
“So, you were close?” I asked.
“He was the first person I called about anything—from acing a test to getting arrested,” Simon said. “And he always always always showed up.”
“Getting arrested?” I repeated.
“Ever the reporter.” He made a tsk noise that should not have been as charming as it was.
“And?”
“I was sixteen and driving without a license.”
I stared at him, making it clear I wanted more details.
“It was a double-dog dare, I had to do it.”
“Oh, well, of course you had to.” I rolled my eyes.
His eyes widened. “That’s exactly what Gramps said and in the same exasperated tone, too.”
“Why do I feel like there’s more to the story?” I asked.
“Because there might have been a girl involved and getting her to notice me was why I accepted the double-dog dare,” he said. “She noticed me, all right, but then I got arrested and her parents wouldn’t let her have anything to do with me.”
“Heartbreak,” I commiserated. “So, Gramps was your go-to guy, but you’re really not angry that he didn’t tell you about his relationship with Pops, his life here, his marriage, any of it, before he died?”
“I assume he had his reasons.”
“Ha!” I pointed my finger at him.
“What?”
“There was hurt in your voice.”
He pressed his lips together until his mouth formed a straight line and he shook his head. “No, there wasn’t.”
“I heard it,” I insisted. “Gramps was your first phone call, the guy who was always there for you—your North Star if you want to be poetic about it—and you’re totally fine with him not telling you that he was in love, shacking up with someone, and marrying him? Come on, O’Malley, own it.”
“All right, fine, I do have feelings about it, but I’m not angry,” he insisted. “More like…”
“Hurt?”
“No, that’s not it, either,” he said.
“Then what are you feeling?” I asked. “Because I for one am furious at being shut out. I would have been so happy for Pops. He had to know that. How could he not know that? Why didn’t he include me in this wonderful life he’d created? It hurts. It hurts so damn much.”
My throat got tight and I felt my eyes dampen.
I was not going to cry about this. Not in front of O’Malley, at any rate.
Not that I thought he wouldn’t be sympathetic but a girl could handle only so much humiliation in one day and, frankly, it had been humiliating to hear about Pops’s marriage from a bunch of strangers—very kind strangers—but strangers nonetheless.
Simon lifted his hand as if he would touch me again but then he dropped it back into his lap. “I don’t think their life together or their wedding had anything to do with us, Spencer. Their relationship was just for them and they kept it that way. I actually respect that.”
“You do?” I reared back to study his face to see if he was bullshitting me. His gaze met mine and he sounded genuine.
“Yeah. We live in a world where everyone shares everything all the time. I don’t need to know what this person had for breakfast or where that person is traveling for their vacation.
I mean, who cares? We should all be living our own lives to the fullest instead of voyeuristically watching the lives of a bunch of online…
” His voice trailed off and I studied him with a raised eyebrow.
He pursed his lips and glanced away.
“That came out wrong,” he said. “I’m not saying any of that is bad, not really.
It’s just that the two things we’ve lost as individuals navigating the world largely through our phones are our privacy and our time, and I think our grandfathers decided they were going to keep both their privacy and their time together sacred, so yeah, mad respect for the old dudes. ”
Dude’s ears perked up at the sound of his name, but he didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes, and a soft snore was his only reply.
I slumped back against the couch. Simon wasn’t wrong.
How many times a day did I pick up my phone to see how my posts had been received?
How often did I check my numbers, views, likes, comments?
Yes, it was my livelihood and I needed to treat it like the business it was, but it took constant vigilance to make certain I didn’t cross the line into oversharing just to juice my engagement.
Simon’s little speech was lovely, but I didn’t believe for a hot second that he was okay with having his grandfather, a man he clearly adored, leave him out of something as monumental as reuniting with his first love.
I caught my breath. I had to know more about how Gramps and Pops had met. There was a story there, I could feel it all the way to the marrow of my bones. For the moment, I was going to do some recon on the grandson.
“I did a search on you,” I said.
Simon’s eyebrows shot up.
I pointed to myself and said, “Reporter.”
He nodded genially but his expression became instantly guarded. “I suppose I should have expected no less. So, tell me, Spencer, what did you find out?”