Today's Reading
Over the years, as the value of her monthly alimony checks had dwindled, Lorraine had been forced to supplement her income by working as a bartender. Once the checks stopped altogether, she began taking in lodgers to make ends meet, including the parade of very dodgy-looking lowlifes Mel and I had seen coming and going from her house.
At some point after Henry Sr.'s death, Hank, the son from that second marriage and a widower himself by then, became aware that Lorraine had stopped paying taxes on the property. To keep the house from going into foreclosure, he had brought the taxes up-to-date and kept them current with the idea that at some point he'd turn the property on Bayside Road into a retirement dream house for him and his relatively new wife, Ellen.
Their relationship is similar to Mel's and mine in that Hank's retired from the construction business now while Ellen is still employed full-time. That's another reason we don't discuss the news. With Covid bearing down, we were both worried about how that would impact both of our still-working wives—Mel is at Bellingham PD and Ellen is a 911 supervisor at What-Comm, Whatcom County's emergency communications center.
"What are you and Mel doing for Valentine's Day?" Hank asked.
"I scored a reservation at Dirty Dan's," I told him. In my opinion, Dirty Dan's is Fairhaven's premier fine dining establishment. "What about you?"
"Ellen's working tonight. We'll be doing our Valentine's celebration on Sunday, her next day off."
When we reached our driveway, Sarah and I peeled away and walked down to the house where I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle—an older-model Honda Accord—parked next to the garage. As we approached the car, the driver's door swung open and a long drink of water climbed out. It took a moment for me to recognize my grandson, Kyle Cartwright.
Because Kyle and his parents—my daughter Kelly and her husband, Jeremy—had spent the previous Christmas with Jeremy's folks in Southern California, the last time I had seen the boy—make that the young man—in the flesh had been during a family excursion to Cannon Beach the previous summer. He seemed to have shot up half a foot since then and was now a good two inches taller than I am.
"Hey, Kyle," I said, grabbing him into a hug. "What are you doing here?"
"Wanted to see you is all, I guess," he muttered noncommittally into my shoulder, accepting the hug but not exactly returning it.
His terse response didn't sound as though he was overjoyed to see me, and the lack of useful information in his reply got my attention, causing me to begin putting together the logistical aspects of this unexpected, early-afternoon visit.
At the moment it was just after two o'clock in the afternoon. My daughter's family lives in Ashland, a few miles north of the Oregon/California border. Their place is a good nine-hour drive from ours. As far as I knew, this was a school day, so not only was Kyle missing school, he would have had to leave home in the wee hours of the morning to turn up so far north at this time of day.
As he backed away from me, I glanced at his car. It seemed to be loaded to the gills. In the back seat, I caught sight of what looked like the top rim of a bass drum. Mel and I had given Kyle his first drum set as a Christmas present several years earlier while he was still in junior high. If he had left home with his drum set in tow, this was not a good sign. Something was definitely up.
At that point, Sarah stepped up to give him a brief sniff before honoring him with a welcoming wag of her tail. Kyle had no idea, but knowing the dog as I do, I understood Kyle had just been granted my Irish wolfhound's instant stamp of approval.
"It's cold out here," I suggested. "How about we go inside? Are you hungry?"
"Not really."
Whoever heard of an eighteen-year-old kid who wasn't hungry? I took that as another bad sign. Something serious was going on here, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
CHAPTER TWO
Bellingham, Washington
Friday, February 14, 2020
I removed Sarah's leash and let her loose in the house. Then I took off my jacket and hung it up. When I turned back toward Kyle, I found he had walked through both the kitchen and dining room and was standing in front of the west-facing windows, staring out at Bellingham Bay. Cloud cover was rolling in, and the water had gone from bright blue to gray.
"What is it, Kyle?" I asked, following him into the living room and taking a seat. "What's wrong?"
"Everything," he said, suddenly bursting into tears. "I want to come live with you and Grandma Mel, please."
Whoa, whoa, whoa! In those few words, he delivered way too much information accompanied by zero useful context.
"Why?" I asked. "What's going on?"
...
