he wasn’t! I may not remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember my grandson’s first black eye.” He sounded rather proud of it, actually, then looked back and forth between Phin and me, archly. “Which of you is dating him?”
“Amy is,” said Phin.
“I am not!”
Grandpa Mac laughed. “I should tell you about the time when Ben was a kid and he wanted to be an astronaut.”
“That wasn’t Ben, Mac. That was Dan.”
“Don’t interrupt!” His face flushed with anger, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do. It subsided, but he lost the clear-eyed sharpness of a moment before, seeming … fuzzier somehow, as he took back up the thread of the conversation.
“You could do worse,” he said, his voice going sort of fuzzy, too, as he leaned over and patted my knee. “I know he’s a serious boy, and maybe kind of grumpy. But I remember when he came home from that dance you went to. What was it? The one at your college … the pie social …”
In confusion, I glanced up at Mrs. McCulloch. She had her hand pressed to her lips, and the tip of her nose was turning red. “The Alpha Delta Pi Christmas social,” she said.
“That’s right.” Mac chuckled, lost in the past. “Dan came home and said, ‘Dad, I met the girl I’m going to marry.’ And I told him he was crazy to marry a college girl. She’d never want to spend her days on a ranch, slopping for ranch hands and washing the manure out of his socks. But he did what he wanted. He always did.”
Mrs. McCulloch’s eyes were brimming with memories, and bittersweet affection for her father-in-law. She settled her hand on his shoulder and said, “I was very happy with your son, too.”
He smiled with paternal fondness that made my own heart ache. Then the past tense seemed to catch up with him, and the moment crumbled into grief, as tangibly fresh and sharp as if I’d only just told him the news of his son’s death.
I didn’t know what to do, and looked in panic to Phin, who’d handled him so well at the start.
“Grandpa Mac.” Her voice was assertive and kind. “Can I call you that?”
He looked at her without recognition, his gray-blue eyes brimming. “Who do you think you are, missy?”
“I’m Phin Goodnight. My sister Amy told me about you, and I brought you a present.” She unfastened a macramé hemp bracelet, knotted and beaded in very specific stones, from around her wrist. Our cousin Violet had given it to her for graduation.
Grandpa Mac watched her wrap it around his arm. “And what the hell is this?”
“This is geomancy. Rock magic. For clarity of thought and better memory. I happen to be a genius, so it’s wasted on me.”
“Hmph.” He touched the lapis and hematite beads. “If you’re such a genius, you wouldn’t believe in magic.”
“If you weren’t such an old coot, you wouldn’t need it.”
Mrs. McCulloch gasped. Mrs. Alvarez, who had risen from her chair when Grandpa Mac became upset, made a choked sort of sound.
And then he laughed. “All right, Miss Goodnight.” He shook his wrist at her. “See? ‘Goodnight’ like the song. This piece of string must be working.”
Ben’s voice cut in from behind me. “Is everything okay, Grandpa?”
Hell. I’d been too intent on the discussion to notice the band had stopped playing. His words were concerned, but his tone was a knot of controlled anger.
As Ben stepped into my line of sight, Grandpa Mac looked up and grinned. “Ben! I’ve been talking to your girlfriend.”
Shock swept the ire from his face, and color, pleased color, flushed his cheeks. I wondered, my heart twisting in sympathy, how long it had been since Ben’s grandfather had recognized him on sight.
Mrs. McCulloch knew a good exit strategy when she saw it. “I think it’s time for Grandpa Mac to have some rest. Mrs. Alvarez?”
The old man made a grumbling protest, but as they helped him from the chair, he didn’t fight them. Ben recovered himself before they left. “See you in a little while, Grandpa.”
Mac grumped something about the prison warden as he went off with the two women.
Ben turned to me and I braced myself for an explosion. I didn’t even dredge up an excuse. I knew he hadn’t wanted me to talk to his family about ghosts, or the past, and I had. I deserved whatever he threw at me.
Finally he put his anger away, shelving it for later.