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“She married my grandfather at twenty-two.”
“So?”
“You’re saying she was in love with someone else before that?”
“Yep.”
“And after sixty years, forty of which she was married to my grandfather, she’s still thinking about this guy enough to need to visit him as part of her bucket list?”
I shrugged. “I think she has a lot of guilt surrounding him.”
“Why does she have guilt?”
“Well, they met when they were thirteen and were apparently totally smitten right from the start. But it was the fifties, and things were a lot different back then. You had to court a girl, and he had to get her parents’ permission. The two of them had planned to start dating at sixteen, but a week before Charles’s birthday, he contracted polio. The vaccine was new and not yet widely available.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Apparently it left him in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. Louise didn’t care, but her father forbade her from dating a man he didn’t think could provide for her. She snuck out to visit him, but like Louise’s father, Charles didn’t think it was a good idea for them to be together anymore. Louise was crushed and told him she was going to wait for him to change his mind. They stayed close, good friends, but a year later, he told her he’d met someone else at physical therapy and had fallen in love. It broke her heart.”
“And she wants to go see this guy?”
“She found out years later, after she met your grandfather, that Charles hadn’t met anyone at physical therapy. He just knew she would never leave him unless he did something, so he made up the relationship. In hindsight, Louise said she sort of suspected that might be the case, though she allowed herself to accept it and put the blame for their demise on him. And part of her had been relieved when their relationship came to an end after she’d realized how much work it would be to take care of him.”
“Damn. That’s heavy.”
“Yeah. Your grandfather was the love of her life, so it all worked out in the end. But she and Charles reconnected on Facebook a dozen years ago. He eventually married and had a nice life, but they’d like to see each other again. His wife passed almost as long ago as your grandfather. He’s in a retirement community, and it’s pretty hard for him to get around much now, so she’d like to go visit.”
Beck shook his head. “I can’t believe I never heard that story.”
“I don’t think it’s something she’s thought about on a daily basis. But when you start to ponder your own mortality, it dredges up a lot of things from the past.”
He stared at me for a long time. “I’m glad she has you. And I’m glad I do, too—for reasons other than you give great head.” He winked. “I needed a reminder of how little time she likely has left. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I don’t think I accepted it until recently.”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous. We all accept things in our own time.”
“Where does Charles live?”
“Utah. We had talked about hitting Bryce Canyon, too. That was something from my list. But we’ll see how she feels.”
Beck nodded.
I put out my cigar in the ashtray. “I’m going to go. I’m sorry for wasting this.”
“I’m not. I’ll light it up later when I’m thinking about you and put my mouth right where yours was.”
I smiled. “Pig.”
“Give some thought to what we talked about. I’d rather have my mouth on the real thing.”
CHAPTER 20
Beck
“PLEASE TELL MEyou’re reading a joke right now.” My brother Jake strolled into my office and found me with my nose buried in my cell. “Because you’re smiling like a schoolgirl with a crush.”
“What do you want, Jake? I have a lot of work to do.”
As usual, he ignored me and planted himself in one of the guest chairs. He used his chin to point to my phone. “Who are you texting?”
