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He laughed as he grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He sent a quick reply.
Glad I’m missed.
He slipped into a pair of sweatpants and slid his phone in the pocket before he headed downstairs. He found his grandfather at the stove, cracking eggs and frying bacon.
The smell reminded him of Sunday mornings back when his mom still cooked and he and his dad could be in the same room without wanting to rip each other’s throats out. It was so long ago that the memory seemed like an alternate image his mind created. But he remembered the salty taste of the bacon and the way his mom would hum as she filled two glasses with orange juice and coffee for herself.
He pushed the memory from his mind and continued into the kitchen.
“Morning,” Lucas said as he slid onto a stool and placed his hands on the kitchen island.
Joe turned a smile on his face. “Are you a morning person, too?” he asked, eyes brightening at the question.
Lucas ran a hand over his chin before meeting Joe’s gaze that was frighteningly similar to his old man’s. “I don’t sleep much.”
“Insomniac?” Joe asked.
“Possibly.” He was never clinically diagnosed, but he had all the symptoms.
“Your grandmother was an insomniac.”
Lucas froze in place. More than his grandfather, his grandmother was never mentioned. The one time Lucas asked his father about her, he walked out of the room and it was never touched on again. There were no pictures or stories of years past, just an unexplainable void in his family history.
“I don’t even know her name,” Lucas admitted.
“Barbara. I called her Barb. Pain in my ass, but god did I love her.”
“What happened to her?”
Joe placed the spatula down and turned from the stove, meeting Lucas’ gaze before focusing his attention toward the dining room window. “She died when your father was thirteen.”
Shame rushed through Lucas for being so in the dark, and not just for his family’s history, but for the pain and suffering they’d endured because of it. The weight of tragedy they must’ve carried for years…
“I didn’t know.”
“Not surprised. He didn’t tell you about me, but he also stopped talking about his mother shortly after she passed. It was rough on him. Your father and I always had different ideas about life, and your grandmother helped keep the peace. When she died, your father pulled away from me, and no matter how hard I tried to break down his walls, they seemed to get bigger and thicker.”
“How’d she die?”
“Took her own life. Your father was the one who found her.” Joe picked up the spatula and flipped the eggs, like he was commenting on the weather.
How many years of grief did he go through before becoming numb to it?
“Jesus.” Lucas couldn’t believe what he was learning. Now he knew the heartbreak that silenced his father and prevented Lucas from ever fully understanding him. In less than an hour, he’d learned more about his father than he’d known his whole life.
“She had mental health issues,” Joe continued. “Not something that was really talked about back then, so we kept it mostly quiet. She’d have her highs and her lows. We had thought she was doing well and then… Well, you know.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lucas was stunned to discover there was so much tragedy in his family history, and he wasn’t privy to any of it. Though, now, he could almost get why his dad would want to leave and never look back. Finding his mother’s lifeless body must’ve done a number on his psyche.
Joe didn’t say anything else, focusing all of his attention on frying the bacon. It was a heavy topic, one that clearly still weighed heavy on his grandfather’s shoulders. He had more questions, but he didn’t want to press too hard too soon.
He had time. He’d cleared his schedule for a few weeks to help Joe with his finances and to find out more about the family he never knew. There were still so many things about his father that he simply didn’t understand, but he was beginning to think all the answers were lying in the small coastal town of Willow Cove.
***
Lucas scanned the many composition notebooks that Joe kept his records in, trying to make sense of them all. The man didn’t even own a computer, and when Lucas suggested it, Joe scoffed.
There was no question about it—he was old school, and that only meant one thing for Lucas; a headache. He rubbed at his temples as his eyes glossed over the scraps of papers with IOUs written on them.
