From his business. From the business that was supposed to be mine. And I didn’t understand.
“You can’t... you can’t fire me, Grandpa,” I stuttered.
He ticked his head to the side. “Pretty sure I just did, Len.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Nope.”
Panic, it was panic that swelled up inside of me as I sputtered, “But… but... why? Because of Jonah? I thought you liked him. Why are you—”
“I do like him,” he confirmed, still smiling that creepy smile. “But I’m firing you because… you stole pens from the gym. I saw them in your purse.”
I drew back and stared at him. This wasn’t about fucking pens. Of course it wasn’t about pens. Grandpa had bought all of my school supplies as business expenses my entire life.
Why the hell was he doing this to me? “But why? I thought”—I had to reach up to wipe at my eye as more panic spilled into my chest at the idea that he was doing this to me for no fucking reason—“Maio House was going to be mine one day. You told me. You told me that when you died it was going to be mine, and that’s why I’ve been working there since for fucking ever. And I’ve been managing it because it’s ours. Because it’s our family’s, and I’m your family. I’m your… I’m your….”
I was panting.
I was fucking crying. Holy shit. I reached up to touch my face, and there were real tears there.
“Why are you taking this away from me?” I croaked, feeling… feeling so fucking confused. “I’ve been doing a good job. Most of the time. Half the time.”
My grandpa just blinked at me. Then he used his reasonable voice on me. “I’m not taking anything away from you.”
“Yeah, you are.” I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, feeling… feeling… holy shit. This had been the plan. My entire life, this had been the plan. “You said… you said it was going to be mine.”
“Is that what I said?” he asked.
I wiped again, trying my hardest not to get upset but failing miserably. “Yeah.”
“When, Len?”
What? “I… I don’t know. A bunch of times. You know you did.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, I did. When you were ten. When you were three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.”
What the hell was he talking about?
He aimed those gray eyes at me steadily. “I haven’t told you that this was going to be yours since you were ten years old.”
He hadn’t?
“It’s been twenty years since I did that, Len, and part of me regrets so much that I put that responsibility on you when you were a kid. Do you know why I stopped?”
I didn’t even answer him. I couldn’t.
Luckily he wasn’t really waiting for a response. “Do you remember that was the year I made you enroll in gymnastics?” I didn’t nod. Of course I remembered. I had really liked it, and I’d been pretty good at it. “Your coach told me how good you were. How much talent and athleticism you had, and he said he regretted that you were going to be so tall because you would never make it to the elite level.”
I jumped in. “What does that have to do with you firing me?”
“Give me a second,” he requested. “I came home and told Peter how much of a badass you were, and he agreed. He said she’s good at everything. Lenny’s going to be able to do anything she wants when she grows up. And that was when I realized what I’d been doing.”
I blinked.
“Before you were born, Len… I had been a wreck because of losing your dad. My heart was broken. It was… dust. I had thought… I had thought for a while there that I didn’t want to live in a world that would take my son away from me,” Grandpa said quietly, more quietly than I’d ever heard, I knew for a fact. “I missed him so much, and I was so angry. And then your mom came to me. I told you this story a long time ago.”
He had. But he retold it.
“She told me she was pregnant with my grandchild. She said she was five months along, and that it was too late to have an abortion.” I knew all of this. “And she wanted to tell me that she was going to put the baby up for adoption because she wasn’t in a place to raise her, but she wanted me to know.