Page 86 of No Way Home
Gramps shrugged. “I’d spent a year tangling with the VC, and then Uncle Sam said I was done. So I came home. By then, Robert was already gone. In the last letter I got from him before I left for basic training, he asked me to please take care of his girl until he got back.”
Ford laughed. “You took care of her all right.”
Then Gramps did something I’d never seen him do in my entire life. He rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said to all of us. “I’m not going to be ashamed of something that God clearly meant to be.”
“You’re sure God had something to do with it?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” Gramps said, eyes blazing likedon’t sass me, boy.“Falling in love with Jenny was the most spiritual experience ofmy life and I can’t be ashamed of that.” He lifted his chin defiantly. “I won’t.”
“But, like, how did it happen?” I asked.
“Simple.” He shrugged. “I got off the train expecting to see my parents and Troy, but instead Jenny was waiting for me. I recognized her immediately from all the pictures Robert had mailed. She said Mom wanted her to pass along a message: My family had the measles, and I was to stay with Jenny’s family until Mom sent word. I knew before we even got back to Jenny’s house that I was going to marry her. And she felt the same. Said she knew what she’d felt for Robert was nothing compared to what she was going to feel for me.” He shrugged again, a bookend to the quick love story of Bowen and Jenny Dupree.
I didn’t realize I’d shoved my hands into my hair. “So you poached your brother’s girlfriend while he was off at war? That’s savage.”
Gramps didn’t deny it.
A snort escaped my nose. “Oh my gosh, wait till the others hear?—”
“Nope,” Holden said firmly. “It stays in this room.”
“What?” I nearly shouted. “Why? This is epic. Gramps is the Mac Daddy of all Mac Daddies.”
Dad cocked an eyebrow at the group. “Y’all should’ve made him swearbeforeyou told him.”
“Whatever,” Ashton said. “Bowen’s good for it. Aren’t you Bowen?” There was a touch of threat in the question.
“Yeah. Of course. But why not? It happened forever ago?”
Gramps pushed off from the wall. “Because your grandmother agonized over breaking Robert’s heart for decades. She didn’t make peace with it until five years ago. Before that, she lived her life terrified of making a mistake in case we were wrong and this wasn’t what God wanted. She thought if she or any of us stepped out of line, we wouldn’t make it into heaven.”
“Oh, man. This explains so much.” Like, why the grandmother I knew as a little boy was so different from the grandmother I knew now. Granny of my boyhood had been rigid and judgmental. Granny now was happy, carefree, patient, and forgiving.
“Right?” Ford agreed.
Gramps’s chest rose and fell before he continued. “When Robbie never came home?—”
“He was killed in action?” I blurted.
“No.” Gramps shook his head. “He just never came home after the war. He was so angry and hurt, that when he got back to the U.S., he hopped another flight to Alaska and never looked back.”
“Dang,” I said. “Does he still live there?”
“Yeah.” Gramps’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “In Juno, with his wife and two adult daughters. Who are both married and have kids.”
“And you haven’t spoken to him in all that time? He never came home to visit in all those years?” I asked again, trying to picture it.
But all I could picture was Griff.
“No,” Gramps said quietly. “I tried, but he cut off any effort I made. The reason Jen finally relaxed was that Robbie’s wife, Loraine, started sending a Christmas card about six years ago. It’s the only communication we get. But there’s always a handwritten letter, a picture of their family, and a PS that kindly asks us not to respond.” The last line sounded like it physically hurt him to admit. “If your granny found out any of her grandkids knew, it would gut her.” He nodded outside where Granny was now loving on Cate, Charlie’s two-year-old sister. “She’s happy and we’re going to keep it that way.”
I glanced at my uncles, Dad, and Blue. “Do the women know?”
“Of course, the women know,” Ashton said. “We don’t keep secrets from our wives.”
Ashton was right; I was indeed rocked. “And you all thoughtIneeded to know this, why?”
“Because, Bowen,” Ashton answered. “Love has potholes. It just does. None of us had an easy ride at the beginning.”
