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It should have brought Julia comfort. Her gramps was no fool. If he believed Elise was coming home alive, why couldn’t she put her faith in the same belief? Or why couldn’t she pretend, at least, during their weeklydinners?
It was easier at the Murphy house. There she didn’t dare express even the slightest worry that Elise wasn’t alive. She needed MIS to stay invested in Elise’s case, and while she knew Ronan wouldn’t stop looking, she was less sure about Nick and Declan. As much as she’d come to care about the two younger Murphy brothers — she’d never met the youngest, Finn, who apparently hadn’t been home in years — she didn’t know them well enough to assume they wouldn’t throw in the towel on a case that was going nowhere, for which they weren’t being paid adime.
In their company, she was careful to refer to Elise in the present tense, to speak about her sister as if there was no doubt she was alive and waiting to berescued.
But her gramps’ house had been the one place she could tell the truth when she was scared without worrying it would be used against her later, a favorite tactic of her mother, who’d always been more invested in her latest boyfriend than in Julia andElise.
Their gramps had taken care of them when their mother couldn’t, had protected them from life’s uglier realities while never lying tothem.
Now Julia couldn’t help wondering if he really believed Elise was alive or if, for the first time ever, he was lying to Julia — and maybe even tohimself.
The porch light came on and the front door opened, her gramps silhouetted in the doorway. From a distance, he might have been thirty, tall and proud in his Army uniform like in the photographs she’d seen of him when he wasyounger.
He’d known she was out front of course, had obviously just been giving her time to collect her thoughts before he decided enough wasenough.
She stepped out of the car and breathed in the air laced with pine and cooling earth as she made her way up the porch steps. “Hey,gramps.”
He wore his uniform of pressed slacks, button-down shirt, and the cardigan she rarely saw him without. His brown eyes shone with affection as he leaned in to kiss hercheek.
“I thought we’d eat on thedeck.”
“Sounds good,” she said, stepping into thehouse.
“I have lemonade and iced tea,” he said. “Unless you’d prefer somethingstronger.”
She laughed. “I’ll takelemonade.”
Her grandfather disapproved of ready-made food and beverages, lemonade included. His lemonade was fresh-squeezed and mixed with simple syrup that dissolved seamlessly into theliquid.
He went to the cupboard and pulled out two glasses, put an ice cube in each, and poured lemonade from a glass pitcher on thecounter.
He slid one of the glasses toward her and raised his own. “To summer, steaks, and freshlemonade.”
She touched her glass to his. “I’ll drink to all thosethings.”
“Let me get the salad and we’ll headoutside.”
He set down his glass and removed a bowl from the fridge. Julia leaned in to get a look and saw that it was her favorite pasta salad, chock full of mozzarella and asparagus and olives in a tangy dressing of blended capers, sun-dried tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and oliveoil.
“Yum, my favorite.” This was safe ground. Food, lemonade, summer. It was a lie of sorts. A lie that everything was okay, that they were like everyone else enjoying the last weeks of theseason.
Sometimes you needed a lie to survive thetruth.
He started for the side door with the pasta salad bowl cradled in his arm. “Bring my glass, willyou?”
Was it her imagination that he moved slower than she remembered? That he held onto the bowl a little too tightly, as if he might dropit?
She shook her head against the notion. Her gramps might be seventy-eight years old, but he was as strong as he’d been when he was a drill sergeant, still capable of swearing a blue streak and kicking her ass — figuratively anyway — when she neededit.
She picked up his glass and carried it with her through the French doors leading to the deck off thekitchen.
It was cooler outside, though still pleasant, and she set the lemonade on the table and watched as her gramps opened thegrill.
“Need help?” sheasked.
“The day I need help cooking a steak is the day pigs fly,missy.”
She smiled. “Justoffering.”
