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But the thought of that morning—lazy sex and worried tears—reminded me of our last day spent in her house. It reminded me of why they werereallyhere, sleeping in my rooms and eating dinner in my kitchen instead of theirs. She loved me—I knew that—but that wasn’t why we’d forged a life under the same roof.
It was because of the bogeymen.
And no matter what happy life we managed to find for ourselves here—with birthday parties and barbecues and gardens full of homegrown vegetables—it would never feel permanent or real, like it was truly ours, until that bogeyman was gone.
Or we were.
***
“So, what are you guysgonnado? Just go down to the Sound and see what you can catch?” Ray was amused, sitting cross-legged on the bed we now called ours as I pulled the tackle box down from the top shelf of the closet.
I chuckled. “Pretty much. Howard is dropping off a couple of rods in the morning for us to use until we get our own.”
She watched me drop the heavy metal box onto the bed, tipping her head and putting on that smile I now understood to mean she was thinking about how lucky she was—for whatever reason. “You know, I never would’ve pegged you for a fisherman.”
“Well”—I unlatched the two clasps with a metallicclick—“I’m not really. It’s just something I did with Grampa in the summer. He was really the fisherman, but I”—the lid creaked open to reveal the bobbers, hooks, and lines I hadn’t seen in decades—“went along for the ride.”
The air left my lungs as I stared atall ofthose things, these little cheap trinkets—some of them rusted, but I’d never have the heart to throw them out—that would mean nothing to anybody else but me. Every single one of them seemed to awaken another core memory, and I held each one up to tell Ray all about it.
“This one,” I said, holding up a big, barbed four-pronged hook, “went right through the skin over my kneecap when I was nine.”
Ray grimaced.
I held up a wooden egg bobber. “Grampa convinced me when I was, like, five that these were actual eggs laid by waterfowl.”
“Oh my God,” she said with a gentle laugh. “That’s so cute.”
“Yeah, I was adorable,” I joked as I picked up a round bright-green bobber. One that was never meant to be dropped into any body of water.
My throat tightened as I turned it over in my hands, and when Ray asked me what it was, I coughed and pushed my lips to smile.
“I made this for him for Father’s Day when I was …” I filled my chest with air, trying to remember. Wishing I could call Grampa up and ask. “God, I had to have been three, maybe four years old. I had made it out of clay or Play-Doh or something in preschool, and all I remember is Gramma telling me how proud of it I was. Rumor has it, I couldn’t wait to give it to him, so he got it a few days before Father’s Day.”
A harsh reminder of the cruelties of time smacked against my heart, harder with every beat, that my grandfather wasn’t here now. To see me pass on this torch, this pastime we had shared. He’d never gotten the chance to see me as a father to someone—biological or chosen—and, man, that hurt. It hurt so much that I had to clear my throat a few times and busy my hands, dropping the little fake bobber back into the box and lifting the tray out to find another treasure. One that struck harder, deeper.
“Ah fuck,” I muttered, lifting the old picture out. “I didn’t even know he kept this in here.”
Honestly, I had never looked beneath the tray at all. He’d always said I didn’t have to, that everything I needed was right at the top, and he’d never been wrong. But now, looking at the picture of my grandfather as a somewhat younger man, holding me as a toddler, I wondered what else might be tucked inside.
“Can I see?” Ray asked gently, holding out her hand.
I passed the picture to her, which warranted an instant smile.
“Oh my God,” she cooed, touching its surface. “You were the cutest little kid.”
“What the hell happened, right?” I offered a teasing grin to hide the emotions that were relentlessly threatening to sweep me away.
“Nah,” she said, still staring at the sweet moment between Grampa and me, forever frozen in time. “You just graduated from cute to hot somewhere along the way.”
Sniffing a chuckle, I pulled out an old greeting card—an anniversary card from Gramma—and a picture of the three of us from my First Communion. Then, just as I was about to make a comment about how he had nothing of my mother hidden in his box of treasures, something else caught my eye. Something beneath one last memento—a picture of our old dog, Sully.
“What … thefuck…” I dropped the pictures and card on the bed as I carefully lifted out the pistol.
Ray’s smile was quick to fall from her face. “Soldier, is that a gun?”
Of course, she knew it was a gun. I was holding it right in front of her face, turning it over in my hands.
And still, I nodded slowly and said, “Yeah.”
