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My father saw the movement then smiled. “You still wear that thing?”
“Every day,” I said.
He had given it to me on my eighteenth birthday. It was locket with a picture of my mother.
The only picture of her I had ever seen.
When I was growing up, I’d asked for pictures, craved stories, was desperate for any little nugget of information about her. My father had always told me it was too painful to look at her, that seeing her pictures reminded him how he had been left a widower with a child to raise on his own.
But he’d given me the locket on my birthday, and it was my most treasured possession.
“I’m glad you like it. Did you know your grandfather had that made?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Do you remember him?”
“A little bit,” I said.
I could remember glimpses of him from when I was a child, but the illness that had eventually taken him had kept him mostly confined to bed.
Some of the memories I treasured were his kind smile and the way he would ask me to read books to him or make a big show of the pictures that I drew for him.
“He was a wonderful man,” my father said.
“You say he was,” I responded.
“He built a legacy, took one fishing boat that he used to use to bring crawfish into port, and turned it into what we have now,” my father said.
“Well, you had a hand in that too, didn’t you, sir?”
He nodded. “Yes. I made my contributions. But that man, he was a visionary.”
He and my mother had married when they were young, and I’d gotten the impression that my grandfather hadn’t entirely approved. But whatever had happened, there was no way to deny how much my father respected, practically revered, my grandfather.
“Well…”
I trailed off, and my father frowned.
The expression stayed on his face as the waitress bought our food.
I pretended not to be jealous of his lobster tails and instead put vinegar and pepper on my kale salad, hoping to liven it up.
“No salt. That’s good. You need to watch that too,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.
He took a bite, smiled, then looked at me. “You were saying?”
“Well, you were just talking about the vision, the legacy, and I was thinking…”
I took another bite, suddenly nervous.
“You were thinking what?”
“Well, we’re getting a little bit bigger every year, and I think our current record-keeping system isn’t it really serving us. And I want to contribute to the company too.”
I broke off and took a bite of my salad. My father didn’t seem pleased with the delay, but I needed a moment.
