CHAPTER 36 LYRA
LYRA
Take these.” Grayson pressed a handful of individually wrapped caramel candies into Lyra’s hand. “You might need them. And watch out for her cane.”
The her in that sentence was Grayson’s great-grandmother, who they’d located in the Hawthorne House bowling alley—yes, bowling alley—where Nan, as she was called, was currently occupied with bossing around a man who, based on his attire, was probably part of the security detail.
“No, no, no.” Nan jabbed at the man with her cane. “When you’re bowling for yourself, young man, you can do what you want, but when you’re bowling for me, you don’t take the coward’s way out on a seven-ten split.”
“We’re going to have to talk about the fact that your house has a bowling alley,” Lyra told Grayson under her breath.
“Technically, it’s Avery’s house now,” Grayson replied. It was the first time in hours he’d said Avery’s name. Lyra could feel how much it cost him.
“Grayson?” Nan spotted them, then glared at Lyra. “What did you do to him?”
“Let me guess,” Grayson said wryly. “You’re referring to the flannel.”
Nan snorted. “Constantly naked until he was about four, this one,” she told Lyra. “And now he has emotional security suits.”
“Lyra,” Grayson said, his lips twitching very slightly, “allow me to introduce you to my great-grandmother, Pearl O’Day. The infamous Nan.”
“Where’s Xander?” Nan demanded. “He’s my favorite.”
“Xander is everyone’s favorite,” Grayson replied. “Nan, we need to talk to you about Alice.”
“My Alice.” Nan’s voice went softer in volume if not tone, then she turned on her bowling partner. “Out!”
The man did not have to be told twice. Lyra was guessing that nighttime bowling was not in his job description.
Nan eased herself down on a nearby bench, but she kept her cane in hand, and Lyra remembered Grayson’s warning.
“Caramel?” Lyra offered.
“I suppose I will.” Nan begrudgingly took the candy, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth.
As the old woman took her sweet time chewing, Lyra and Grayson took a seat on an opposing bench.
“Why the sudden curiosity about my Alice?” Nan asked Grayson finally. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve ever asked about her.” Nan glanced at Lyra. “Died before this one was born, my Alice did.”
That one sentence spoke volumes: She doesn’t know. Either that, or Nan was lying through her caramel-chewing teeth.
Lyra left it to Grayson to decide on their next move. He went for the direct approach. “Does the date March fifth, nineteen sixty-seven, mean anything to you?”
Nan’s grip on her cane ominously tightened. Wordlessly, Lyra leaned forward and passed another caramel across the gap between the benches.
“If you’re after the Hawthorne fortune,” Nan told Lyra, unwrapping the candy, “you’re too late. Another girl got there first.”
“I’ve met Avery,” Lyra replied, unruffled. “And I wouldn’t take money from this asshole if my life depended on it.” Lyra softened the word asshole. Slightly.
“That’s her nickname for me,” Grayson informed Nan.
“I like you.” Nan pointed her cane at Lyra. “Less than Avery. Hell of a lot more than the other one.”
“Eve?” Lyra could have cursed herself for the way that name escaped her lips.
“No—not that one. The other, other one,” Nan said. “Emily. Real bitch, she was.”
“Nan.” Grayson gave his great-grandmother a look.
“God rest her soul,” Nan added.
Grayson moved to Nan’s bench, took her hand, and tried again. “March fifth, nineteen sixty-s—”
Nan whacked Grayson’s foot with her cane. “I heard you the first time.”
“What happened that day?” Lyra asked, taking her chances. “To your Alice?” That was a guess, but it proved to be a good one.
“That was the day,” Nan said, her eyes closing, “that my Alice disappeared.”
Disappeared? Lyra’s eyes darted toward Grayson’s. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“There one day, gone the next. Poof. Not so much as a good-bye. We were poor as dirt back then, so the police weren’t inclined to look too hard for Alice.
Tobias didn’t look too hard, either, which made me think he thought she’d run away.
They’d been courting just a few months at that point, but still—he was the type who would have looked. ”
“How long was Alice gone?” Lyra asked.
“Almost a year.”
A year. Lyra wondered if Grayson was thinking about Avery. About tests.
“Nan,” Grayson said. “What happened when Alice came back?”
“Stubborn.” Nan’s eyes were still closed.
“My Alice was always so stubborn. She wouldn’t tell us where she’d been—not a damn word.
I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that Tobias would take her back, but he was young, and she was Alice.
He took a few days to think about it, and on the seventh day, he showed up with a box he’d carved himself in one hand and a ring of keys in the other.
He told Alice he didn’t need to know where she’d been or what she’d been doing.
He gave her the box and told her that as far as he was concerned, she could lock her secrets away inside for as long as she liked. ”
A box. Alice’s secrets. Lyra could hardly breathe, but somehow, she managed a question. “And the keys—were they to the box?”
“No.” Nan’s eyes opened. “They didn’t know I was listening. I was a nosy old woman even when I was young.” Nan’s expression glazed over slightly. “I was thirty-eight when Alice disappeared. She was nineteen.”
“Nan.” Grayson shifted to sit beside her. “The keys?”
“Tobias said he’d made them himself while she was gone. He told Alice the story of his year was in those keys—twelve of them on the ring, one for each month he’d spent without her. He let Alice look through them, and once she’d had her fill, Tobias said they’d never speak of that year again.”
Nan stood, leaning more heavily on her cane than she had before.
“What happened to Alice’s box?” Lyra asked.
“Don’t know.” Nan was clearly done—with them, with this topic, with this night. The old woman made her way slowly to the door and out it.
Once she was gone, Grayson turned to Lyra. “I’ve never seen the box,” he said. “But I do know where we can find the keys.”