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“Philip, you’re everything I want in a man, except—”
“Except…I’ve heard it all before. Good-bye, Carla, if I see you Friday, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too.”
The phone clicked in her ear and droned for several moments. The entire conversation had gone poorly. She’d hoped to at least start off in a lighter mood, and then explain her hesitancy about meeting him for the weekend. But she’d only succeeded in angering Philip. And he’d been furious. She knew him well enough to realize this type of cold wrath was rare. Most things rolled off him like rain on a well-waxed car. Only the important matters in his life could provoke this kind of deep anger. And Carla was important.
She still hadn’t decided what to do by the time she joined her grandfather after work on Thursday for their regular game of checkers. Carla hoped he wouldn’t try to influence her to go. She’d taken Gramps out to dinner Sunday afternoon, and he had done little else but talk about what a nice young man Philip was. By the end of the day, Carla had never been more pleased to take him back to the retirement home. She prayed today wouldn’t be a repeat of last Sunday.
“Afternoon, Gramps,” she greeted him, as she stepped into his small apartment.
Gramps had already set up the board and was sitting in his comfortable chair, waiting for her. “The more I think about that young man of yours, the more I like him.”
“Philip’s not my young man,” she corrected, more tersely than she had intended. Carla had suspected this would happen when Philip met her family. Gramps and her dad had joined forces with Philip—it was unfair!
“ ‘The lady doth protest too much’—Shakespeare.”
Carla laughed, her first real laugh in two days. She and Gramps played this game of quotes occasionally. “ ‘To be is to do’—Socrates,” she tossed back lightly as she pulled out the rocking chair opposite him and sat down.
Gramps’s eyes brightened and he stroked his chin, deep in contemplation. “ ‘To do is to be’—Sartre.” He nodded curtly to Carla, and the set of his mouth said he doubted that she could match him.
“ ‘Do be do be do’—Sinatra,” she said, and giggled. For the first time in recent memory, she’d outwitted her grandfather. Soon Gramps’s deep chuckles joined her own, and his face shone with joy. “I’m going to miss you, girl.”
“Miss me?” She opened the game of checkers by making the first move.
“When you and Philip marry, you’ll be moving to Spokane to live with him.”
Miffed, Carla pressed her lips tightly together and removed her hand from the faded board. “Did he tell you that?”
“Nope.” Gramps made his return move.
With her fingers laced together in her lap, Carla paused and looked up from the checkers. “Then what makes you think I’m going to marry him?”
“You’d be a fool not to. The boy clearly loves you, and even more obvious is the way you feel about him.”
Carla returned her gaze to the checker pieces, but her mind wasn’t on the game. “He’s a cop, Gramps.”
“So? Seems to me your daddy’s been a fine officer of the law for twenty-odd years.”
“And Mom’s been miserable every minute of those twenty-odd years.”
“Your mother’s a worrier. It’s in her blood,” Gramps countered sharply. “She’d have fretted about your dad if he was the local dogcatcher.”
“But I’m afraid of being like Mom,” Carla declared vehemently. “I can’t see myself pacing the floors alone at night when Philip’s called on a case, or when he isn’t and just goes away for a while to settle things in his head. Don’t you have any idea of how much time Mom spends alone? She’s by herself when she needs Dad. But he’s out there”—she pointed to the world outside the apartment window—“making the city a better place to live and forgetting about his own wife and family.” Her voice was high and faltering as she spewed out her doubts in one giant breath. “Gramps, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of loving the wrong man.” Her fists were tightly clenched, and her nails cut painfully into her skin.
“And you think Philip is the wrong man?”
“I don’t know anymore, Gramps. I’m so confused.”
His gnarled hand reached across the checkers board and patted her arm. “And so in love.”
—
Talking out her fears with Gramps had a releasing effect on her, Carla realized, as she walked around the lonely apartment hours later. Only a few days ago, Philip had been sitting on that couch, holding her as if he’d choose death rather than let her go.
Her gaze was drawn to her cell. She’d promised to call him by now and let him know if she was coming. Her heartbeat accelerated at the thought of hearing his voice. With trembling resolve, she reached for her phone and waited for the electronic bleeps to connect their lines.
Philip answered on the first ring with a disgruntled “Yes?”
“Do you always answer your phone like you want to bite off someone’s head?” Just hearing his voice, unwelcome and surly as it was, had her heart pounding erratically.
