The Secrets of Lake Road - Karen Katchur Page 0,47

sight of her.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Gram said. “I don’t suppose you could stick around for a minute.”

Jo closed her eyes before turning around and forcing a smile. “No, sorry. I’m on my way out.” She was about to leave when Gram slumped forward, not a lot, but enough to cause concern. She maneuvered around an old lamp, a stack of books, and crouched on the floor next to her. “Are you okay?” She touched Gram’s forearm. Her skin was cool.

“I’m a little tired today. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” Close up, Gram looked pale.

“I’m fine.” She waved her off. “It’s just a lot of stuff to go through.” Gram looked down at the photo album opened in her lap to a picture of Pop when he was a much younger man. The picture was in black-and-white. He was in a sailor’s suit and sporting a crew cut, serving in the Navy at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Gram and Pop had married right out of high school before he had enlisted. She ran her finger over the old photograph. A sad smile crossed her lips.

“Pop was handsome,” Jo said.

“He was dashing in his uniform,” Gram said. “I remember seeing him in it for the first time.” She brought her hand to her chest. “I was so proud and scared for him. That damned war.”

Jo gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “But he never saw any action. He didn’t have to fight. The war was ending.”

“Thank God,” Gram said, but she seemed miles away, lost in memories.

Jo envied her parents’ marriage, the open way they had loved and respected each other. No marriage was perfect, of course, and there were times when Gram and Pop argued, followed by long stretches of silence, but they had always found their way back to each other. Jo wondered how they were able to balance the good with the bad and keep their love strong for so many years. She supposed it had to do with starting off in the right direction rather than buried in secrets the way her marriage had begun. And yet, she reminded herself that her love for Kevin was just as strong as her parents’ love for each other. It was just that sometimes her love was so tangled with guilt, it was hard to separate the two.

Gram continued to page through the photo album. Most of the pictures were taken before Jo had been born. Gram’s eyelashes were wet with tears. It had been five years since Pop passed and still, at times like these, his death seemed to catch Gram by surprise.

“I miss him too,” Jo said, and wiped a stray tear from her own eye.

She had been close to Pop ever since she was a little girl. She used to follow him around the house while he was doing chores—fixing the kitchen sink, changing the oil in the car, repairing the old washing machine. While he had worked, she would tell him stories, made-up bits and pieces from books or magazines, or she would act out scenes from the playground, or explain in lengthy detail the arts and crafts projects she had worked on in school. He would listen and ask questions as though whatever she was telling him was important when most of the time it was not. It was fair to say she had worshipped Pop and believed he could do no wrong. Even through adolescence, when she and Gram could hardly stand to be in the same room together, through all the arguing, she had maintained a close connection to Pop. That was until the summer she had turned sixteen years old, the summer Pop had learned she had gone ahead and gotten herself pregnant.

She had found out two weeks after Billy had drowned. She had missed her period. At first she had thought the stress she had been under and the grief had made her late. It had been reasonable. But after a few more days had passed and still no period, she had known without having to see the doctor. Her breasts had been sore and swollen more than usual, and her lower abdomen, although normally bloated around that time of the month, had felt different somehow. She had lain awake at night and sworn she had felt a fluttering in her belly as though the baby had already begun to move, to say, Hey, here I am.

Terminating the pregnancy hadn’t ever been a consideration. How could she have killed