What the hell will I do with this lazy old dog?
I think he can spend whole days without moving.
Even when Gramps first got him, he was a tortoise.
Not the kind of dog you take on runs or into the woods for tracking. He’s an ornamental beast, even if the roaring howl he lets out at any hint of an intruder doubles as an alarm system.
The women of the family adore him, of course, but that’s expected.
Women love big helpless lumps they can cuddle.
Only, I’m his caretaker now.
Crap.
I rake a hand over my face, sipping my whiskey.
Today hit me like a fucking Mack truck.
I still don’t know where any of this is going.
The alcohol burns like a rocket on its way down my throat.
I give myself a few seconds to appreciate the feel, the flavor, the reassuring warmth of the fire.
Then I open the first album.
Gramps’ familiar face grins out at me, the photo bleached of color with age. I estimate it’s from the 1950s, back when he was a young man, scrappy but infinitely confident.
When he was comfortable, but not yet wildly rich, fresh from the war and gallivanting around the Mediterranean like some kind of Mainer Indiana Jones before Indy was even a thing.
I take another sip before paging forward.
Gramps at the beach.
Gramps with my grandmother at their lake house upstate—I don’t know what the hell will become of that retreat, but it’s not my problem.
I barely knew her. She died when I was young and he never married again.
Time moves through the sixties and seventies and things start changing. He’s wearing more expensive suits, his hair slicked back.
There are a few photos at fancy events with Grammy dressed up. A slender, pretty figure with eyeliner and big brown hair, even into middle age.
Gramps fucking glows. It’s his eyes, I think, lit up like stars.
I never saw him look that happy when he was alive.
Mom and Dad, conspicuously absent, aside from a few photos of my mother as a little girl, standing awkwardly with her parents.
I page forward, watching him progress from stuffy old New England workhorse to modern and wealthy man of culture. Rich beyond his wildest dreams.
The old man made life look easy.
There are a few later shots of him relaxing on his yacht, holding a glass of bloodred wine up for the photographer with a mysterious half smile.
“Dammit, Gramps. Why’d you have to go and complicate my life?” I mutter. “I don’t need your sense of adventure.”
It’s not likeheever got hitched because someone else forced him to from the Great Beyond. I never really knew my grandmother, again, but it’s obvious he loved her.
