Page 67 of The Holiday Grump
“You’re right. She bought me clothes and dressed me up. I went along with it, but I never felt like myself. Then my grandpa broke his leg, and I spent a lot of time taking care of him at his house. My grandma had died a few years earlier, and he lives in a cabin outside town. Elora hated going there, so she went out with friends while I hung out with my grandpa and his brother, Glenn, who used to own the bookstore. He would come over to help, and we’d talkabout books. They were very different. My grandpa was a fisherman, just like my dad. Between them, they’ve probably read two books, and they’re proud of it.”
“Really? I thought you’d come from a long line of academics or aristocrats or something.”
I had to laugh. “Definitely not.”
“But this house… I thought it was a family place. I saw black-and-white photos of guys who totally look like your ancestors.”
She must have taken a thorough tour of my house while I slept. My heart skipped at the thought. She wanted to know me.
“It is a family place. It used to belong to my great-uncle Glenn. He was a reader and a businessman. He got wealthy but never married. There was a rumor he was gay, but he never came out, so I don’t know. He was private but very smart. We always talked about books.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died suddenly. He just fell down and never got up. I found him two days later.”
“That’s horrible!”
I nodded. “Glenn was old, but it happened so suddenly. Then I found out he’d left me this house and his bookstore. I inherited everything. Until then, we’d been renting a two-bedroom apartment in town. I worked for the family business, handling the books and assisting on fishing trips. My dad expected me to take the reins. I went to college and got my useless English degree, to “get it out of my system,” like he said. That’s where I met Elora. I think she had a romanticized idea of being a fisherman’s wife in a remote coastal town, but then the reality hit, and she wanted out.”
“You go out for days, don’t you? For lobsters.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty brutal. To be fair, I didn’t want that life either. But I liked being back here. It’s home. And I had Glenn and his bookstore, and I spent my spare time there. I never thought I’d inherit it. It didn’t even cross my mind.”
“That’s wild! You have one person in town who gets you, and they suddenly die, and you inherit everything they owned.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “I’d rather have someone who gets me than all their stuff. Every time.”
“Me too,” she said, her voice breaking a little.
The heat was evaporating, so I ladled more water on the stones. Noelle fetched the bundle of birch branches from the changing room floor and heated it over the stove. I took it from her and gently whacked her back with it. She did the same for me, sending a shock wave down my spine. The smell transported me to the summer.
“The money made everything worse,” I continued. “Elora wanted to move. She wanted us to sell the bookstore and the house and buy a fancy apartment in Bangor, on Broadway. That last summer, we went to so many open houses.”
“Spencer had a place there! I can’t imagine you…”
“Neither could I.”
“So you found fault with everything?” she guessed.
Did she really know me that well? I nodded.
We sat for a while, breathing through the puff of hot steam. The piles of fresh snow behind the small window were starting to look more and more appealing.
“How did she die?”
The question jolted me. Not because it was insensitive, but because I hadn’t landed on an answer that felt true. “Shehad an aneurysm. It was sudden, just like Glenn. Except she was healthy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’d been fighting, and she ran off to Bangor. I thought she was seeing someone there, but I never found out. I accused her of cheating. I yelled at her, and she stormed out. And then I heard a crash. She’d lost consciousness and driven into the gate.”
“That’s awful! That’s like someone destroying a book you were reading.” She stared at the stove. “Like being in the middle of a story and you’re holding the only copy, and then poof! It’s gone, and you’ll never find out how it ends.”
I’d gotten condolences up the wazoo and heard every platitude under the sun, yet nobody had come close to voicing my pain. I hadn’t told them the whole story, either. You weren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead.
“That’s exactly how it feels.”
She placed her hand on my thigh. We were both covered in sweat now, our faces red from the hot air and steam. “Did you ever try to find out? About the cheating?”
