26. On The Slow End

26

ON THE SLOW END

" T his is awesome!" Kelsey screamed in his ear as he made the turn onto the cliff road. "This is almost better than sex!"

She thought she heard him grunt but wasn't sure. It was hard to tell anything with the helmet on and the wind slapping her in the face combined with the roar of the motor.

She was glad that she put a sweatshirt on even though it was seventy out and she didn't think she'd need it.

You need it when you are going this fast outside in the open air.

The speed limit was fifty on this road up to the top of the cliff. She knew he was going faster. At least it felt it to her.

She was holding on for dear life and loving every minute of it.

Where the heck had this been her whole life?

A few minutes later, Van reached the top of the cliff and shut the bike off. She got off, her legs a little wobbly for a second, then she took the helmet off and shook her hair out of her face.

"How hard is it to get a motorcycle license?" she asked.

"Nope," he said. "I'm not helping you with that. I don't need your father on my case."

She giggled. "You're not afraid of my father, are you? Because it's my mother you have to worry about."

He lifted an eyebrow at her. "All the more reason for you not to do it and get me in trouble. We can take a ride on this whenever you want. I like driving it around the island over my truck most times."

They moved closer to the ledge and she put her arms on the top of the fence to look out over toward the ocean.

The water was crashing on the rocks below. She loved watching Mother Nature at its finest.

"I've been here before," she said. "I've been all over the island. It's so pretty. More so from the air, but I don't go up much in the helicopter. I just don't leave the island enough to worry or if I do I take the ferry. My parents take the helicopter more though."

She never really saw the reason to have to do it though she'd been on it before. It was fun and all but she wasn't in that much of a hurry.

"Maybe one of these days a charter tour would be nice. Bet you've been on them."

"No," she said. "I actually haven't. I've been in the helicopter with my parents just flying to Boston. Though I think one of those tours would be nice. Maybe we can do it sometime. Until then, this is pretty enough for me."

"It is," he said.

He was quiet again. As if he needed to clear his head.

He'd brought up about the dreams and she wondered if he needed to talk about it more.

"Do you want to tell me what else your mother is saying to you?"

He turned his head to look at her.

"She isn't saying much more than I said. I think she's trying to get me to push myself. Or it's my subconscious. I mean I know it's that. I keep hearing this guy's voice but no face. A deep voice. My gut is telling me it's my grandfather."

"Have you seen pictures of your grandfather?" she asked.

"There are some at the house. Older ones. But as I said, it's just a voice."

"What's he saying?"

"The same things as my mother or thereabouts. To give it a chance. Don't make judgments. Open my heart and my mind."

"We know you opened your heart," she said, running her hand on his arm. "I'd like to think you were opening your mind. Maybe just a bit on the slow end."

He grunted. "It's driving you nuts I haven't opened anything else up, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," she said. "I'm not sure how you can not want to know." She paused for a second. "Unless there is no going back and you're afraid of what you'll find. That maybe your grandfather wasn't the bad guy after all?"

He let out a sigh. "I don't know what I think or believe. It's like this Pandora's box of information. Everything changes once I know it."

"Everything has already changed, Van. You know that. Would you even want to go back?"

"This is one of those trick questions. If I say yes, then that means I don't know you. I never got to meet you. Touch you."

"Love me," she said cheerfully.

"That too," he said.

"It's not a trick question. I think there was nothing holding you back home and that is why it was so easy for you to come here. You wouldn't have come if you didn't want to know the truth. The question is why it's taking you so long to find it?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Do you want me to be with you when you open the next one? Will that help?"

"You told me you won't open anymore," he argued.

"I won't. I asked if you wanted me to be with you."

"Would you if I asked?"

"I'd love to be there," she said. "Let's go open one now."

He shut one eye and squinted at her. "No patience."

"Listen, Van. If I had your patience I'd have grandkids before you finished opening them."

"I doubt that," he said drily.

"Don't be so sure," she said. She moved back to his motorcycle and got her helmet on and then swung her legs over the back and patted the seat. "Sit down and let me put my arms around you. How easy do you think it is to have sex on this thing?"

"Not easy and not happening," he said. "Don't get any ideas."

"You're no fun." He climbed on in front of her. She poked him in the ribs when she said it, but he ignored her.

When they returned to his house twenty minutes later, he parked his bike in the garage and they went in through the side door. She was almost running to keep up with him at this point. Guess he wanted to know more than he let on.

They got to his office and he opened the desk drawer where everything was left and found envelope four.

"This one is heavy," he said. "I think it's a book or pad or something."

"So you've been picking it up and putting it down?"

"Yeah," he said. He opened it and pulled out a notebook. He flipped through and she could see Barry's handwriting on it.

"Looks like a journal to me," she said.

"Shit," he said. "It'd take me hours to read this."

"I can't believe he only has one considering it's been so long," she said, reaching for it. "First date looks like him venting over your mother dating your father."

He took it out of her hands and looked it over. "Seems that way," he said. "I guess I'll read this little by little."

"Which means it will be months before you get it done," she said. "Sit and start now."

He turned to look at her. "Maybe I'm not ready."

"Van, you wouldn't have rushed in here if you weren't ready. It's six. I'm hungry. You probably are too. Start reading and I'll go make us some dinner."

"Are you ordering me around?" he asked.

"I am. For your own good. I'm only in the other room if you need me."

She didn't give him a chance to argue and returned to the kitchen to look for food.

He had slim pickings, but she found ground beef and hamburger rolls and figured that would be good enough.

She was pulling out spices to mix with the beef like Duke had taught her to do.

She went to his deck and noticed his grill was gas so she turned that on.

There were potatoes in a basket, so she popped them in the microwave while she formed the patties.

It was going to be a simple rustic meal, but it'd fill them up and be good enough.

Twenty minutes later, dinner was ready and on the island, so she went to search out Van.

"Dinner done?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I can bring it in here if you want to keep reading."

"No," he said. "I need a break."

He followed her to the kitchen. "Do you want to tell me what it says?"

"A summary," he said. He reached for the rolls and made her burger. "A lot of what your father told me. My grandfather didn't like my father and forbade my mother to date him. My mother didn't listen. There were fights. Some paragraphs of my grandfather missing my grandmother and that my mother and grandmother were two peas in a pod. I could almost read the sarcasm in the writing over that statement."

"Did your mother ever talk about your grandmother?" she asked.

"No," he said. "That is what is odd. My grandfather made it sound like they were both devastated over my grandmother's death and grief caused my mother to act out."

"You don't believe it?" she asked, taking a bite of her burger.

"I'm not sure. If my mother grieved that much, why didn't I know about it?"

"You weren't born," she said. "Then you were a kid. Or maybe your father didn't want her to talk about it?"

"Could be a lot of that. I've gotten ten years in. There weren't a lot of entries. They seemed to be clustered when he was having her looked into and updated. When he met me."

"How did that make you feel?" she asked.

"Not sure. He wrote it like a proud grandfather and that he hoped my mother and he could get back on track. Then there was nothing and months later an entry that my father was up to his old ways again and turning my mother against him."

"Did he say why?" she asked.

"From what I can gather it has to do with control. My father always had to be in control. He felt my grandfather was a big talker and couldn't put his money where his mouth was and my mother would be better off without him. I did read one part that my grandfather wished he was around more, but he was trying to build his legacy."

"I'd say he did it," she said.

"At the expense of a relationship with his daughter," he said.

"You only know that by thirty minutes of reading or less. There is a lot more there."

"I know," he said. "I want to open another envelope. It feels as if there is a thumb drive in it."

"Files?" she asked. "Or a video?"

"I'm hoping it's a video so I can hear a voice. But he wanted me to open these in stages so shouldn't I read the journal first?"

"Nope," she said. "You need to do things the way you want to do them for you. They want you to be open-minded so they have to accept you'll do this at your pace and the way you want."

"I'm pretty sure they don't know what I'm doing and I'm only having mind games with myself," he said, closing one eye at her.

"I'd rather believe they are coming to you in your dreams, but that's just me."

"You're romantic that way," he said.

"I don't know if I've ever thought I was romantic," she said. "But hey, we can go with it."

They were still eating their dinner. "You like to go with the flow, don't you?" he asked.

"I never thought one way or another. I think with my job I can't always do that so it's nice to be able to do it in life. I just find that a lot of people I've been around in my life don't appreciate my sense of humor or how I behave."

"That's their problem then, isn't it? Or is it an issue with your family?"

"My family is fine with it. I know when to be respectful. I think it's more friends over the years and when I dated. I tried to tone it down, but it's hard."

"It's always hard to be someone you're not, Kelsey."

She thought that too. Which was why the older she got the more she didn't give two craps what people thought of her. But she knew that was also part of why she was single too.

Maybe she didn't bend or compromise enough.

"If you want to open the next one, I say you do it."

"After dinner," he said. "Then I'll bring you home. Poor Frankie."

"I fed him before you got there. He's fine yet."

They finished up quickly and cleaned up together, then went to his office and he didn't hesitate to grab the fifth envelope and rip into it.

A thumb drive did come out and he went to his laptop and popped it in.

"There are some files and a video."

"Play the video first," she said. "They aren't numbered and I know you're curious."

He hit the button and Barry popped up on the screen. "Is that my grandfather?"

"It is," she said.

She looked at the man she missed and felt her eyes start to fill with tears.

"Hi, Donovan. If you're watching this then I'm dead. Kind of sucks, but there it is. And you've opened up several envelopes already. I'd like to think your curiosity is getting the better of you. I know you want to blame me for everything, but I hope after reading my journal you'll understand what happened."

He paused it. "Guess I needed to finish reading that."

"You can go back and do it. Let's finish this. But first, is this the voice you're hearing?"

"Yeah," he said. He cleared his throat. She knew that the man on the screen in front of them was still a stranger to Van, but deep down he wasn't. He was blood and blood was a hard bond to break.

Van hit play again and Barry's voice came back on. "I always loved your mother. Maybe my biggest fault was loving her too much. When I lost your grandmother, Lauren was all I had left. I loved her so much that I pushed her away. I felt your father was an asshole and she could do better."

Van let out a half laugh and she looked over to see a smirk.

She reached over to pause it. "Do you feel the same way?"

"Yep," he said. "He's an asshole and she could have done better. Not sure why she never left him."

"Keep watching and let's find out if your grandfather knows."

He hit play again. "Your father never liked me. He turned your mother against me and we fought. I should have given her space like Lauren's mother needed, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to lose her and did in the end. I tried hard to get your mother back and every time I thought there might be a chance, something happened. I believe it was your father in her head again. I'm not sure what hold he had over her. I wish I knew so I could have broken it. Everything I've done for the past few decades was to build for your mother so she could leave him. She left him but not the way it should have happened. You're all I've got left of her. This is yours now to do what you want. I hope you keep it. I hope you learn to love it the way I did. I hope you feel for this island the way I did and that you'd think of your mom being here with you. She always loved the water and the beach. I brought her here as a kid every summer. She told me she was going to live here one day. She told me the house she always dreamed of. I got it for her. But now it's for you. Hope you like it and can feel some of her there."

"I guess that answers some of those questions," Kelsey said. "He did make this house into a place for you."

"Anyone would be nuts not to love this house," he said.

"I know I do," she said. "I'm jealous of it."

He ignored her statement and played the video again. "One day I hope you understand and forgive me. And when you know the truth, that you don't blame your mother or your father. Not even me. There is no blame anymore. Too much time has been wasted casting blame. It's time to just live your life. Only one more envelope to go and then you'll have what I hope is enough for you to believe that I never stopped loving your mother and that I wished I'd been in her life and yours. I'm not the monster that you might have been led to believe. Take care, Donovan. I do love you even though you don't remember meeting me."

Kelsey was sniffling at the end of the video and got up to get a tissue. "Man, that's heart-wrenching. I felt for Barry before but even more so now. I'm sorry. You might not want to hear that."

"It's fine," he said.

She blew her nose. "Is it really though?"

"No," he said. "It's not." He grabbed the last envelope and ripped it open without hesitation. There was one piece of paper in there. "Jesus."

"What?" she asked.

She took it out of his hand. "When you're ready for it all, tell Kyle it's time for the key."

"Oh my God. My father knows all of this?" she asked. She'd suspected her father did but never said a word.

"He told me that I'd be going to him when I was ready. I'm not. I need to process this and read the rest of the journal first. Let me take you home."

"Stay with me tonight," she said. "You shouldn't be alone."

"I'll be fine," he said.

"Maybe I don't want to be alone," she said. "Did you think of that? I knew Barry for most of my life. I just watched a man that I lost. I saw the hurt in his eyes like never before. Please, stay with me tonight."

"I will," he said. She saw some of the hurt she was feeling in his eyes and knew that Barry was getting through to Van.