The Guardian's Honor

Grandpa ignored it, his face tight and forbidding. “Whatever it is you want, I’m not interested. You can be on your way.”

She sucked in a breath, but Bodine didn’t seem fazed by the blunt words.

“I need to talk with you, sir. About my great-uncle, Edward Bodine.” He paused, glancing at her. “Maybe we should do this in private.”

It took an instant to realize that he must think she was just the hired help. Well, maybe that wasn’t far from the truth.

“You can talk in front of me,” she said. “This is my grandfather.”

“Stepgrandfather,” Grandpa said.

She wouldn’t let him see how much it hurt to hear it said aloud. It was true, of course. Her mother had been his stepdaughter, not his daughter. Still, he’d never referred to her that way, probably never even thought about it, before she’d gone away.

There was still a trace of hesitation in Bodine’s face, but he nodded. “Fine. As I said, I’ve come here to ask about Ned Bodine, my grandfather’s older brother. He disappeared in 1942.”

“Disappeared?” Her grandfather wasn’t responding, so apparently it was up to her. “What do you mean? Disappeared how?”

Bodine switched his focus to her. “He ran away from the family home on Sullivan’s Island. Near Charleston?” He made it a question.

“I know where Sullivan’s Island is.” One of the barrier islands off Charleston, the kind of place where people with money built summer houses, she’d guess. “Why did he run away?” He’d said 1942. “Does this have something to do with the war?”

Her grandfather never talked about the war, but he’d served then. She remembered hearing her grandmother say something to her mother about it, and then turning to her eight-or-nine-year-old self and cautioning her not to mention it.

He doesn’t want to talk about the war, so we have to respect that. Her grandmother’s soft voice had seemed very mournful. It did bad things to him.

“People said Ned ran away because he was afraid to fight in the war,” Bodine said. “We—the family, that is—we’re sure that’s not true.”

Her grandfather turned away. With one hand he gripped the back of a straight chair, his grasp so hard that the veins stood out of the back of his hand.

Tension edged along Cathy’s skin like a cold breeze. Something was wrong. Something about this man’s words affected Grandpa. She shook her head, trying to shake off the tension.

“I don’t understand what this has to do with us. Are you saying my grandfather knew this Ned Bodine?”

“No.” He looked from her to her grandfather, seeming to gauge their responses. “I’m saying that your grandfather is Ned Bodine.”

The chair Grandpa held skidded against the wood floor as he shoved it. “Get out.”

“Grandpa…”

“Stay out of it.” He turned to her a face that seemed stripped down to the bone.

“I know this is a shock,” Bodine said. “But if we can just talk it over—” He cut the words off suddenly, looking beyond her to the doorway.

She whirled. Jamie stood there, hanging on to the frame with one hand. He swung one leg forward, its brace glinting dully. “Mama, I can’t find my bear.”

“Not now, Jamie.” She moved to him, easing him protectively away from the two tense figures in the living room.

But Jamie craned his neck to see around her, smiling at Adam Bodine. Unlike his great-grandfather, Jamie loved company, and he saw very little of it.

“Hey. I’m Jamie.”

“Hey, Jamie.” Bodine’s response was all right, but his expression wasn’t.

Anger welled in her. How dare he look at her child with shock and pity in his eyes? She pulled Jamie a little closer, her arms cradling him.

“You heard my grandfather, Mr. Bodine. It’s time for you to leave.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Then, without another word, he backed out the door and walked quickly away.

“Was he a bad man, Mama?” Jamie snuggled against his pillows after his good-night prayers, looking up at Cathy with wide, innocent eyes.

Cathy smoothed his blond cowlick with her palm, love tugging at her heart. “No, I’m sure he’s not.” How to explain to her son something that she didn’t understand herself? “He wanted to find out something about a…a friend of his, but Grandpa couldn’t help him.”

Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? Her grandfather’s reactions to the Bodine man had been odd, to say the least.

After Bodine left, Grandpa had stalked to his bedroom and slammed the door. He hadn’t come out until she was putting Jamie in the tub, and then he’d ignored the subject of their visitor as if the man didn’t exist, instead talking to Jamie about his boat and promising to have it finished by bath time the next day.

“But Grandpa would’ve helped the man if he could’ve, right, Mama? ’Cause that’s what Jesus would want him to do.”

“I’m sure he would,” she said, though her heart wasn’t at all sure.

How difficult it was to teach her son about faith when her own was as weak as a willow twig. She smoothed the sheet over him and bent to kiss his soft cheek.

“Good night, little man. I love you great big bunches.”

His arms squeezed her tightly. “I love you great big bunches, too, Mama.”

She dropped another light kiss on his nose and went out, leaving the door ajar. She followed the sound of the refrigerator door opening to the kitchen.

Grandpa was pouring himself a glass of sweet tea. He lifted the pitcher toward her and raised his eyebrows in a question. Taking that as a peace offering, she nodded.

“Some tea sounds good about now. September’s turning out near as hot as August, seems like.”

He brought the glasses to the table and sank into his usual chair. “Too dry. We’d better not spare any more water for those tomato plants, I reckon, if we want the well to hold out.”

It was the sort of conversation that passed for normal now between them. Since she’d come back to the house where she was raised, destitute and with a disabled child in tow, she and Grandpa had existed in a kind of neutral zone, as if they were simply roommates.

Grandpa had been that way with Jamie at first, too, but it hadn’t taken long for love to blossom between them. She found joy every day that Jamie now had the father figure who’d been absent from his life.

She had to be content with that and not expect anything for herself. Once Grandpa had made up his mind about someone, he wouldn’t turn back.

So she had nothing to lose by pushing him a little about that odd visit. She moved her cold glass, making wet circles on the scrubbed pine tabletop. “What did you make of Adam Bodine?”

His face tightened. “Fellow was just barkin’ up the wrong tree, that’s all. Maybe he was pulling some kind of scam.”

That hadn’t occurred to her. She considered it for a moment, and then set it aside.

“He could have been mistaken, maybe, but not a con artist. The man radiated integrity, it seemed to me.”