Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(91)

“How come Daddy always says that?” Charles asks his Mother.

She looks over at her husband and smiles. Ethan takes hold of the boy’s hand and answers, “Because I do miss her. Your great grandma was quite a woman.”

Laura can tell by the upturned corners of Ethan’s mouth that he’s remembering the way it was. Soon, he will, as he always does, launch into stories of the years they spent together—the boy and his grandmother, a woman who at one point claimed to have no use for children and then risked everything to protect him.

“I’m named after her,” the eight year old Oliver boasts.

“So what!” Charles answers, “I’m named after Grandpa Charlie!”

“Big deal,” Oliver taunts, “Grandma Olivia is the one Daddy loved most.”

“Boys!” Laura chides, and they stop bickering.

“You’re right, Oliver,” Ethan finally says, “I did love Grandma Olivia the most, but that was because I never knew Grandpa Charlie. Grandma did, and she said he was the finest man who ever walked the earth. She loved him till the day she died. A person has to be pretty special to warrant that kind of loving, don’t you think?”

Charles gave a get-even grin.

“Daddy had a special secret with Grandma Olivia,” Oliver, needing to have the last word said. “Right, Dad?”

“That’s right, son. A very special secret.”

“Tell us the secret,” Charles whined.

“If I did that, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it?” Ethan said. He squatted beside the grey tombstone and traced his fingers along the etching of his grandmother’s name.

How easily it all came back to mind—his mama dead without ever once seeing New York City, his daddy, beaten so viciously that he was no longer recognizable. Ethan Allen had stood by and let those things happen; what could he do he reasoned, he was just a kid. But then, there was that fateful night, the night he finally found enough courage to protect a person he loved. Killing wasn’t a thing to be proud of, but he was proud. He was proud of being able to set his fear aside and do what had to be done to save his grandma. He was proud enough to have shouted from rooftops his doing of such a deed. But Grandma Olivia saw it differently; she wanted to protect him as he had protected her. Only three people knew the truth of what happened that night—two of them had died without telling, and if that was the way Olivia wanted it to be, he also would take the secret to his grave.

Ethan silently said the words to the Lord’s Prayer then he stood and turned to leave. In the misty grey of an April morning, with his wife walking alongside and his boys bounding several steps ahead, Ethan turned back and whispered, “I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you too,” Olivia answered, but of course the words came to him only as a thought—a remembrance of her having said those words countless times before. She said it at night when she tucked him into bed, mornings as she sent him off to school, the day he graduated high school, the day he graduated law school, the day he got married, when each of the boys were born, she’d said it a million times, maybe ten million—little wonder the memory of her saying such a thing was so easy to call to mind.





Heaven

Olivia and Charlie Doyle linked hands as they watched Ethan Allen and his family leave the cemetery. You can surely be proud of the way you raised that boy, Charlie said without speaking the words—for in heaven words are unnecessary, thoughts simply float from a person’s heart and settle where intended.

I am, Olivia responded.

He’s wrong, Charlie said; wrong in thinking only three of you knew what happened that night. After I was forced to leave the earth so suddenly, I began watching over you. I watched over you every minute of your life, including that night. I knew you were telling the truth when you told Detective Gomez you’d been the one to do the shooting.

Olivia smiled the smile of angels, not so much an upturning of lips, but a warm thought that floated across in the same manner as words.

Charlie knew the truth of what happened, he knew that Ethan Allen fired off the first shot then fainted dead away. Scooter Cobb had been hit in the side; hit hard enough to be stunned and fall over, but not hard enough to stay down. The man had barely hit the floor before he was pushing himself back up and coming at Ethan Allen. Olivia, who had tripped and fallen back onto the carpet, saw what was happening, scrambled across, grabbed hold of the shotgun and fired the second barrel of the Browning square into Scooter Cobb’s chest. She fired when he was less than five feet from the boy; when that shot hit it ripped the man’s chest open and cut through to his backbone. The second shot was the one that killed Scooter Cobb.

You never told the boy the truth of what happened that night, Charlie thought directing the words to Olivia.

No, she answered, I didn’t. I knew he got far more joy from believing he’d saved my life than he could have ever gotten from knowing I’d saved his.

A soft chuckle touched down in Olivia’s heart and she understood it came from Charlie. They kissed in the manner of angels, a touching of hearts rather than lips; then turned their eyes back to earth—to the Pancake Palace where the Doyle family was having breakfast.

Ethan Allen, who had just finished a cup of coffee turned to the two boys and said, “Did I ever tell you about the time your great grandma…”