Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
Simon
“You have no social media presence.” Hannah’s voice was bewildered as if she couldn’t fathom such a thing.
“I know.”
“Is that why your grandfather not sharing his Outer Banks life with you doesn’t bother you?
Because you’re just like him? Extremely private?
” As she fired the questions at me, I could almost picture her with a pad and pen or a tape recorder in hand.
This was definitely Hannah the reporter in action.
Her blue eyes snapped with intelligence and I knew that anything I said would be forensically scrutinized to root out any hidden meanings or subtext.
She was studying me as if she were a lie detector in human form.
This should have been annoying, instead it was kind of hot.
“Just because I respect Gramps’s decision to guard his privacy doesn’t mean I’m not bothered or hurt or angry,” I said.
“Honestly, I haven’t known about their relationship for very long so I think I might be in shock.
It feels as if Gramps let me in on a secret that I have to keep because my…
” I paused and cleared my throat. “There are certain members of my family who will absolutely freak out if they find out about this.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “I see.”
“Do you?” I asked. “You said Pops got divorced the same year Gramps was widowed. Do you think your grandmother knew about their past? How would she feel about it if she did?”
“Nana has been happily remarried to my Bonus Grandpa George for many years,” Hannah said. “And Nana and Pops remained the best of friends after their divorce. If Pops told anyone about your grandfather, it was her.”
“Are you going to ask her about it when they’re back from their cruise?” I persisted.
“I don’t know.” Hannah glanced about the cottage. “I suppose that depends upon what I find here.”
“And what about your father or his siblings?” I asked. “How would they handle finding out their father was gay?”
“Dad is an only child and he wouldn’t care,” she said.
“He and Pops were very close and while he’d probably be hurt that he was shut out of Pops’s life here—like me—I know Dad would just want Pops to have been happy, which he obviously was.
That’s why none of this makes any sense to me.
Why did Pops keep it a secret when he knew we’d all be happy for him? ”
She looked so bewildered and sad that I had a sudden urge to put an arm around her and assure her that it wasn’t her or her dad or her Nana that had kept her grandfather from telling them about his life here in Cape Split. But I didn’t.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” I said, and meant it. I had a theory about why Pops hadn’t told her about Gramps. I knew without a doubt that Gramps had kept his life a secret because of my father, and he had likely asked Pops to do the same so that there was no way my father would find out about them.
Gramps disowned my father when he abandoned me and my siblings after my mom died and took off to start his life over.
Being an insurance guy, Gramps had made certain that my mother’s life insurance went to her children.
My father tried to fight it in court and failed.
There was no love lost between my father and Gramps and Gramps knew my father would use the information that Gramps was in a relationship with a man against him in any way he could.
So, yeah, I wasn’t surprised that Gramps had kept it a secret.
I thought about explaining all this to Hannah, but we’d had a hell of a day and I just wasn’t up for reporter Hannah’s questions, which would rightly be many. I would tell her, eventually, just not today.
Hannah flopped back against the couch and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Sorry, grief bomb.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I’ve had a few of those bombs over the past few months. One minute I’m fine and the next I feel like someone kicked my legs right out from under me.”
Hannah dropped her hands and met my gaze. “When Pops first died, I’d get random chest pains that hurt so bad I thought I was having a heart attack.”
“Yeah, I literally tried to outrun my grief and ended up tearing my meniscus,” I said.
“I’m hearing that as ‘exercise is bad.’ ” She smiled but there was a shadow of sadness in her eyes that made me want to hug her. I didn’t.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help me search the house tomorrow?” Hannah asked.
“What would we be searching for?”
“Anything that would tell the story of our grandfathers,” she said. “Memorabilia, letters, a journal.”
“And do you think that will help you come to terms with all of this?” I gestured to the cottage. Maybe if I could help her make peace, she’d be more willing to sell.
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I just want to know more.
” She tucked her legs beneath her and turned to face me.
Her eyes sparkled and enthusiasm lit up her face, dispelling the hurt of just a few moments ago.
“Just think, if they fell in love when they were teenagers, there might be mementos of their summer fling before they went to college. How romantic is that?”
“Gramps didn’t go to college then. In ’67 he shipped out for Vietnam. He went to college on the GI Bill when he came back. If they met that summer, it was right before he left.”
Her eyes went wide. “Maybe that’s why they never forgot each other. It must have been heart-wrenching for them to part that way, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Gramps never talked about his time in Vietnam. Ever.”
“There’s a story there, O’Malley,” she said. “And as a reporter, I’m just the person to uncover it.”
Was this couch made out of rocks? I tossed and turned, tangling my legs in the blanket. I should have slept in the second bedroom, I supposed, but the plywood in place of the windows had given me coffin vibes.
A sheen of sweat coated my body and I shoved off the light cover, letting my skin breathe.
I’d told Hannah to take our grandfathers’ bedroom upstairs—chivalry was not dead, not on my watch.
Also, self-preservation advised that I didn’t want to get blasted by her T-shirt cannon if I startled her by getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
She and Dude had trotted upstairs shortly after our agreement to search the cottage tomorrow.
I hoped Hannah was getting a good night’s rest because I sure as hell wasn’t.
Instead, I was too busy sifting through every memory I had with Gramps, trying to remember if he ever mentioned a person named Billy or a summer at Cape Split or anything that might have clued me in to who he really was.
I hadn’t been completely honest with Hannah.
I did respect that Gramps had been true to himself and found love during his final years, but I also felt as if I’d never really known the man who had been my hero my entire life.
And it bothered me. Like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt, I kept thinking about Gramps shutting me and my siblings out of this part of his life.
Even knowing that he might have made that choice to protect us from my father initially, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t tell us in his later years.
I switched on the side-table lamp and reached for the carving of the angry bluebird.
Gramps’s hands had carved this wood and painted its comically snarky expression.
I stared at the bird, willing the grief to come but it didn’t.
I had shut the pain so forcefully out of my life when Gramps passed that I had yet to shed a single tear.
I fell asleep with the bird clutched in my fist as if by holding something he’d created, I could feel Gramps here with me.
The smell of coffee roused me as did the sensation that I was being watched.
I wasn’t clear which of the two interrupted my sleep first but given the hot breath that ruffled my hair, I was betting it was the staring.
I blinked my eyes open to find a big black snout hovering just over my face while Dude stood beside the couch, looming over me.
I jumped with a small yelp that got my heart pumping and pushed up to a seated position. Dude took this as an invitation to join me.
Hannah entered the living room, carrying two cups of coffee. She set one on the table beside me. “Mornin’, O’Malley. I hope Dude didn’t wake you.”
I glanced from the dog to her. He’d obviously been outside already and she’d had time to brew coffee and get dressed.
Today’s outfit was a halter top and shorts and her wavy hair was fastened on top of her head in a sort of hair ball with loose strands that framed her face, softening the look. She’d clearly been up for a while.
“When did you get up?” I reached for the mug of coffee.
“An hour ago…” she admitted. “I’m just so excited. There’s so much to discover about our grandfathers and their life together. We need to get cracking.”
I stifled a groan. Barely. “Shower first.” I pushed to my feet and took my mug of coffee into the bathroom. I tried to blast the cobwebs from my brain with a cold shower, as I suspected she’d give me fifteen minutes before she started without me.
Hannah was seated at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee and a notepad in front of her. She glanced up when I entered and pushed a banana toward me. “Fortify.”
“You sound like we’re preparing for battle.”
“I took a quick glance at the closets upstairs,” she said. “There are many…many, many, many…boxes.”
“Ah.” I nodded and refreshed my coffee from the pot before peeling my banana.
Dude let out a mournful whimper. Hannah shook her head at him. “No, you don’t like fruit, besides you’ve already had your breakfast, a snack, and a second snack.”
In a bout of drama, Dude dropped to the floor and put his head on his paws with the most woebegone expression he could muster. I lifted my cup to hide my smile. I wasn’t sure who was the more dramatic of the two of them but I had to admit it made for some fine entertainment.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and glanced at the display.
My sister was texting to check in, no doubt worried because I hadn’t texted since my first message when I’d arrived.
I shot her a quick note back. There were three memes from my brother, which I immediately replied to, but nothing else of any substance.
It struck me then how it used to be me texting Charlie when he went away to college, but now I was the one getting the messages in a complete role reversal.
“Ready?” Hannah set her mug and plate in the sink and turned around to face me.
I stuffed the last of my banana into my mouth and grabbed my coffee. “Lead on.”
Hannah was so excited she practically bounced up the stairs with Dude at her side, looking as if he thought we were going on an adventure. I told myself this actually worked out well for me given that I now had an extra set of hands and paws to help me clear out all the stuff.
“Which room should we start in?” Hannah asked when we reached the landing.
“The album was in the guest bedroom,” I said. “But the windows are being replaced today so we should wait on that room.”
She nodded. “Main bedroom it is.”
“What about the attic?” I asked.
She turned in the doorway. “Attic?”
I pointed up at the recessed rectangular door in the ceiling. “Given that there’s no basement, they probably used the attic for storage. It’ll be too hot to check it later in the day.”
Hannah considered me and then the ceiling for a moment. “Attic it is.”
I reached up and grasped the handle, pulling down the hatch from which a collapsible ladder unfolded. It creaked and squeaked as if it hadn’t been used in ages.
“I don’t want to even think about the grandfathers climbing this thing while they were living here.” She shook her head.
“Maybe they didn’t,” I offered. “Maybe the people who owned the house before them were the last ones to use the attic.”
“Meaning we’ll have to dig through a stranger’s stuff?” Hannah wrinkled her nose. “What if it’s creepy stuff?”
“Such as?” I straightened the ladder and set it on the floor.
“Doll heads.”
“That’s the first thing that came to mind?”
“Doll heads are creepy.”
“What about taxidermy critters with glass eyes that watch you?”
Hannah bounced back a few steps, almost tripping over Dude. “That’s it. You win.” She gestured to the ladder. “You go first.”
“Me?” I protested.
“You,” she insisted. “You came up with the critters. You lead.”
“Fine.” I glanced away, keeping my smile to myself. I was having entirely too much fun teasing her.
I turned on the flashlight app on my phone and stepped cautiously up the creaky wooden steps, hoping they didn’t break under my weight.
When my head and shoulders cleared the floor, I swept the light across the attic.
It wasn’t a large space. I doubted I could even stand upright anywhere but in the center because it was packed.
Between this and the bedrooms, we were going to be flat-out sorting for at least a couple of weeks.
“How does it look?” Hannah called from the base of the ladder.
“I have good news and bad news.” I turned to look down at her, taking in her eager expression and feeling a flicker of guilt that we were at cross-purposes. “The good news is that the attic is not very big.”
“And the bad news is that it’s stuffed to the rafters?” she guessed.
“Yeah.” I climbed down the steps. “But no dolls’ heads or taxidermied critters, at least none that I could see.”
“Phew.” She blew out a breath. “Okay, there’s two of us. We can make quick work of it.” She didn’t sound any more convinced of this than I was but I didn’t call her on it.
The reality was we spent the next two weeks working in the attic every spare second we had around our day jobs.
Hannah frequently took afternoons off to film snippets for her online content while I caught up on emails and paperwork and client calls.
Mornings, the coolest part of the day, were spent hauling items from the attic to the front porch to be sorted into piles of keep, pitch, or donate.
We were making progress and surprisingly, we even had some laughs in the process.
It was late morning and we’d been at it for three hours when I crossed the room to examine an old rolled-up carpet.
I poked it with the toe of my shoe and then turned to Hannah, making my face deadly serious.
“Spencer, what do you suppose the odds are that there’s a body in here? ”