Chapter 48
GRIFFIN
Lucas dabs at his eyes. “It was a nice service.” He says it like he’s been to a lot, which, maybe he has in his line of work.
I nod, not willing myself to speak. It’s a crisp, sunny day, the first after a week of rain so cold it’d be snow in a week or two.
Only the three of us—Lucas, Sasha, and I—remain next to the yawning hole in the ground at Quince Valley Memorial Gardens.
Though it wasn’t a crowd to begin with. Betsey was here earlier, along with the officiant.
And one more person. I saw Sasha’s brother way out by the cluster of cedars a hundred feet away, too.
I know he’s still at the Rolling Hills, though I haven’t seen him at all. I asked Cass to have her staff keep an eye on him, but she says he rarely leaves his room.
He left it today, though. Sam never knew Chester, but he knows the man saved his life. And his baby sister’s.
I still haven’t forgiven him for getting Sasha into all of this in the first place, but I can begrudgingly acknowledge that it was decent of him to show up here.
I didn’t make note of his presence, but I didn’t yell at him to get lost either.
I might have if he tried talking to Sasha, but he disappeared before she even noticed he was here.
Now, Sasha takes a shaking breath. “What happens next?”
I swallow past the dryness in my throat. At some point, we have to talk about us. Soon, now that Chester’s gone.
But I know she’s not talking about that.
I glance over at the cemetery workers, who’re standing next to a digger, chatting like this is just another day.
Next, they’ll come and fill this hole. In a few days, when the marker arrives, they’ll install it at the head of his plot.
Then they’ll lay the sod, time will pass, and life will carry on.
She’s not talking about that, either.
I’m about to say something about heading home, but Lucas clears his throat. “Actually, I’ve got something back at Chester’s place for you. He told me I had to wait until he was ‘in the ground’ to give it to you.”
Lucas is off the clock. He was relieved from his work the day after Chester passed.
But he’s here now. He only knew Chester a couple of weeks, but he proves what I know would be the truth if Chester hadn’t been such a recluse: that the old man had a way of getting you to love him just by existing.
Whether he was cracking jokes or snapping grumpily at you like he did more and more of toward the end, he won’t be easy to forget.
Sasha looks quizzically up at Lucas. “What is it?”
“It’s easier to show you than to explain.”
Being back at Chester’s house is rough. I have to excuse myself, saying I’m going to check on the chickens, before remembering the chickens are already gone. When I come back inside, I can tell Sasha’s been crying, too. I wrap my arms around her, kissing the top of her head.
“I love you” is the only thing my addled brain can think of to say.
“This way,” Lucas says. He brings us back to the bedroom at the rear of the house.
It’s surprisingly bright, the big window gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
Boxes line the walls, each of them neatly labeled.
Some of them say things like Personal Items and Newspaper Clippings Nora in the home stretch before graduation; and the kids, who’re home with sitters.
Otherwise we’ve got everyone, including Dad. Gloria’s on her way, too, which I make sure to text Ford about. He sends me a middle finger emoji in return.
“Not an engagement, folks, sorry,” Sasha says. She turns to Jude. “I mean, unless you’re going to ask Nora over the phone right now.”
“Should I?” Jude quips.
A few people at the other tables chuckle. Someone cheers. They turn back to their meals when he gives a wave and turns back to us. He leans in, his voice lowered. “I’m waiting for Christmas Day.”
Sasha does a little happy dance. Then she clears her throat. “Okay. I really do have something to say. Thank you all for coming on such short notice.”
The server’s taken our orders, and everyone’s got a drink in hand. We’re all buzzing with nervous energy, most of all Sasha, who looks for a moment like the Cheshire Cat.
She sobers quickly, though, and I can see her try to center herself to speak.
I wrap my hand around her calf, just under the hem of her velvet blue dress, which hugs her curves so beautifully I told her when we left our room that I needed to wear horse blinders so I don’t have to watch other men staring. She just giggled and sashayed out the door.
Now, that seems a million miles away as she wraps her hand around the back of my head, her fingers gripping the side of my neck as if she needs to hold on to say this.
“You all know Griffin and I have lost a lot in the past few weeks.”
She swallows.
Both my sisters grow teary-eyed. Jude and Dad look on the verge, too.
“But the loss of precious belongings doesn’t hold a candle to the loss of a dear friend.”
She talks about Chester and the friendship we all had. I have a feeling these were the words she was too choked up to say at his service earlier.
She talks about the impact he made on our lives.
Then she talks about the treasure he was hiding in his house.
“There were diaries in that room, belonging to the man Chester called his grandfather.”
“He wasn’t?” Dad asks, aghast.
“He wasn’t,” Sasha says. “He was, as it turns out, someone we are all deeply familiar with. Though we never met him ourselves.”
A buzz goes across the table. Jude leans in. Dad sets his water down.
Blake frowns like this is a business conundrum. “Who was he?”
“Rather than tell you, I’m going to read a passage from the first diary entry we read today. I think it’ll become clear very quickly.”
She clears her throat, pulling up her phone, where we transcribed the paragraph we read this afternoon. Now that I’m hearing it for the second time, I’m surprised I needed to read more than the first sentence to figure it out.
“Life is so bereft,” she begins, “that I ask myself with every passing breath why I continue living it at all.”
Jude sits back in his chair, his hand clapping over his heart.
“If I had anyone I could speak to now—and I do not—I would ask myself why I have taken such a great risk and settled so close to where the most unthinkable moment in my life occurred. Worse yet than the day we left the symbol of our love with women an ocean away.”
“My God,” Dad says.
Jude lays a hand on Dad’s. “Keep reading.”
“But it is that very beating heart that keeps mine still alive. Her existence on this earthly plane gives me hope that God forgives us for what we did; that my love resides in Heaven, safe, happy, and waiting for me one day. While I don’t want to breathe a breath of air if she doesn’t, I must. And I will, for the child we share, though she shall never know my name. ”
Sasha lowers her phone. “The entry is signed J.E.Q.”
Everyone around the room lets out a different sound at the revelation that Chester’s Joseph was our JEQ; Eleanor’s James, residing under a secret identity in the very town where he lost her. Gasps. Amazed words. A sob from Chelsea.
“He stayed here,” Jude says, his voice astonished. “Why?”
“Because he found Clea,” Chelsea says, her eyes wet with tears. “Somehow, he found her. Was she here with him? Why else would he stay in Quince Valley where the police wanted him for murder?”
“Does he talk about the murder?” Jude asks.
“We read that and called this meeting,” Sasha says. “Then we read the rest of that book. He talks about what really happened that day. And how he came back to the room to find the love of his life already gone.”
Dad looks at none of us when he says, “He can be exonerated.”
“There are more diaries,” Sasha says. “Boxes and boxes more. I think all the answers we might ever want will be in those books.”
Then Jude says the one thing I think is the most true out of all of this. “This was James’ story, this whole time, wasn’t it? Eleanor was the one the world lost, but James was the one who made sure she was never forgotten.”
There’s hardly a dry eye at the table as we all look around at the people we love. Separate conversations, some teary, break out across the table.
Except for Dad. He must be processing everything, because he sits quietly, his hands tight on the table.
But then Sasha glances down at me, and my attention’s back on her in an instant. She clinks her glass, and everyone quiets, their eyes back on her.
Nerves suddenly dance across my skin. She never told me about anything else.
Sasha smiles. “Not to take away from this moment, but I hope while I still have the floor you’ll all indulge me by letting me share a little more news.”
I have no idea what she’s going to say. My mind goes everywhere all at once, from she’s going to tell them our marriage was fake and she’s moving back to New York to—
“Griffin and I are moving out of state.”
Dad knocks his water over. “What?” He sounds truly devastated, hardly noticing Cass coming over to mop up the puddle.
I see it all happening, but it’s like it’s in slow motion, because my attention has fully turned to Sasha, whose eyes are on mine. I’m on my feet without knowing how I got there, my heart beating hard.
“In case anyone didn’t know,” Sasha says to the group without turning from me, “I’m in love with your brother and son…and brother-in-law, and uncle—I’m in love with Griffin Kelly.”
Chelsea’s hands are at her mouth. Cass smiles, tipping her head to Dad’s shoulder.
“Reading that diary entry,” Sasha continues, “made me realize just how much.” She clears her throat. “Griffin, I don’t want to breathe a breath of air that you don’t.” She takes a soft breath, like she’s proving the line she just spoke. “I want to make our life together, Griffin. Wherever that is.”
“What about you?” I croak, trying to grab hold of my runaway heart. “You’ll get bored in a small town.”
“I didn’t get bored here, did I?”
“You had a job. Friends. A mystery to get involved in.”
“Who says I can’t find those things there?” She smiles. “Griff, it doesn’t matter where I am. The most important thing is with you, I’m not alone. I’ve never felt less alone than since knowing you. And I know I’ll always feel that way so long as you bring me with you wherever you go.”
Her eyes are on mine, and I know she’s not talking about revealing my company secrets or bringing her along into dangerous situations. She’s talking about me opening up to her. Talking to her the way I do with no one else.
Letting myself feel, the way I can about no one else.
I grasp her face, thumbing a strand of hair off her perfect cheek. “I promise, Angel,” I whisper. “For you, I’m an open book.”
Sasha lets out something like a laugh and a sob together. Then she buries her face in my neck.
“I love you,” she whispers against my shirt.
I tilt her face up to mine and kiss her, longer and more deeply than I feel like we ever have before.
That is, until Cass says, “Not again!”
Cheering erupts around the table, though I think my family doesn’t quite know why we’re celebrating, when, by all accounts, we already have everything we could ever ask for.
I break the kiss. “I love you too,” I whisper.
Sasha’s eyes brim with tears, but she’s smiling. Then she rises up and whispers in my ear, “And you’re going to fuck me tonight, right?”
I grin, sliding my hand as far as I dare down her back in front of my family. “That’s a fucking promise.”