“How come no one took any of it down?” I managed to ask.
“They must have cherished him here.”
Clay approached the desk. He picked up the family portrait, examined it with a smile, and passed it to me. My emotions were mixed. That classroom was the place Grampy spent most of his time away from home. I could smell the same lemon air freshener he used in the attic. It was so weird; I could almost feel him there.
I put the photo aside and tore apart his desk. The pages had to be here. I opened drawers and found loose papers, unmarked tests, and stacks of writing supplies.
“You have to be here, you have to be here, you have to be here,” I kept saying out loud, trying to convince myself.
Inside one of the drawers was a wooden box with a lock.
“What do you think this is?” I picked it up to show Clay.
He grabbed hold of it, observing each side. “I don’t know. Do you think the pages would be in there?”
“Must be, but I can’t find a key.” I kept searching in the other drawers. “Where else could it be?”
Clay could tell I was anxious. “Anna, let’s step back for a minute. Breathe.”
“I can’t step back!” I looked up. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this? We’re so close.” I kept looking, not realizing the box was slipping between my fingers. I lost my grip and heard a loud crack. The box had broke open, spilling papers all over the floor. My heart skipped a beat. But when I looked closer I saw they weren’t journal entries; they were cards. I picked them up one after another. That’s when tears began to fall. They were the Father’s Day cards I had written to Grampy from Halifax. I’d sent one every year, and I just assumed he had thrown them out. But he had kept them. All of them. I sank onto the floor and began to weep.
“I’m sorry, Anna.” Clay leaned down. “He loved you very much.”
“I know.”
Clay held on to me, and I could feel him, you know. I could feel both of them. I cried for all the times I had wanted to come home. I wished I could have done more. I wished I could have done things differently. But we can’t change the past, all we can do is live it, learn it, and try to do better.
And I was trying. I was trying my hardest and I hoped he understood that.
Clay stood up and picked up the photo frame. He looked at it for a good minute. He squeezed his eyes shut. Then all of a sudden, he smashed the frame on the ground.
“What are you doing?” I was shocked.
Clay knelt down, picked away the glass, carefully took the photo out of the frame, and picked up a stack of papers that had been nestled in behind it.
“I had a feeling,” he said. “I think like him, y’know.”
He went through the papers for a minute. I was still too shocked to move a muscle. Clay’s reaction went from intrigued to interested and then to sad.
“Oh, Rudy,” was all he said.
“What is it?” I asked, finding the strength to stand up.
“We found it, Anna. I think we found what you’ve been looking for.” He held out the pages to me.
I grabbed the papers, and noticed there was a lot of text. It was all in cursive, messy, and I was frustrated because I couldn’t make out his handwriting. I began breathing heavy because of the anxiety, and I could feel my throat begin to clog.
That was when I felt Clay wrap his hand around my free one. He put his other hand on my shoulder, and we faded into darkness.
“What happened?” I asked. I was exhausted.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Clay said as the world around me began to shift. The darkness faded and a dusty floor expanded around our feet. A bed rose from the ground and there was a young woman lying in it. Her face looked familiar.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re in a hospice,” Clay replied.
“Why are we in a hospice?” I asked as a small black child—he couldn’t be any more than ten years old—entered the room. I didn’t recognize him at first, but it all clicked when the woman in the bed said, “Rudy, Rudy come here.”
All the warmth in my heart began to fade away, and I could feel intensity in the air; the boy looked scared. He reminded me of…me. I didn’t have a good feeling.
As he walked closer to the bed I could see tears in his eyes. I didn’t know who the woman in the bed was.
“Why do you have to be sick?” young Rudy asked, choking back a sob. The way he spoke was different—he spoke with an English accent. That must have faded with age. The woman held on to him. She was young, but her face was very weak. Though I could hear her humming, a similar tune to one Grampy used to hum to me.
“Why did Mom have to get sick? And how come Dad never made it to Canada?” he cried.
I was witnessing one of my grandfather’s earliest memories. Then I looked closer at the woman in the bed. She was the woman in the photo album I had found at Grampy and Nan’s house. But who was she?
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” Young Rudy was holding on to the woman’s hand.
“You’ll find a way,” she said to him kindly. “You always do. You were always the most resourceful one of us.” She tried to smile.
I looked back to see Clay and he had a sad look on his face.
“How old was
