Grandpa Bobby nodded. “You're not gonna come huntin' for me, are you, Paine? I want a promise.”
“You've got it,” my father said, not happily.
Grandpa Bobby hitched a silvery eyebrow at my mother. “Donna, I'm countin' on you to keep this hotheaded husband of yours from runnin' off the rails.”
Mom told Grandpa Bobby not to worry. “We'll miss you, Pop,” she said.
“But why are you leaving?” Abbey blurted. “Why won't you stay here with us?”
“It's tempting, tiger, it truly is,” my grandfather said, “but don't forget, the U.S. government thinks I'm dead. When the time's right, I'll be proud to march into the American embassy and stamp my fingerprint on a piece of paper and clear up all the confusion. But for now it's useful that certain folks don't know I'm alive. I've got some important business to clear up, before I can come home for good.”
My sister bolted from the table, but she didn't get far. Grandpa Bobby snagged her as she dashed by and pulled her into his arms. He used his faded bandanna to dry her cheeks.
“What if something bad happens?” Abbey cried. “I don't want you to die for real.”
“But I can't live for real until I finish this thing,” he said. “Please try to understand.”
He fished something out of his pocket. “These are for you, Abbey. It's only fair, since your brother got the queen's coin.”
Abbey's eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Whoa,” she said under her breath.
We all leaned in for a close look at the two green earrings. The stones were small but the color was brilliant, like reef water.
“Emeralds,” Grandpa Bobby said.
Mom was dazzled, too. “I won't ask where you got them,” she said.
“Oh, probably another ‘poker game,'” Dad remarked.
“Don't worry, I earned 'em fair and square,” said Grandpa Bobby. “I've been carrying 'em around for years, hopin' to meet just the right girl. Now I have.”
He dropped the emerald studs into Abbey's palm and said, “Those little greenies are worth more than diamonds.”
“They're worth even more than that,” said Abbey, “to me.”
I'd never seen my sister so excited. After Mom helped her put on the earrings, she ran to check herself out in the hall mirror.
Grandpa Bobby said, “Abbey, you're as lovely as your grandmother was. I only wish you could've known her.” He looked at my father. “And, son, I wish…”
He didn't finish the sentence. Slowly he got up and went out the back door. Through the window we could see him sag against the trunk of our big mahogany tree. He was rubbing his eyes.
“Do you still remember her?” I asked my father.
“Like it was yesterday, Noah.”
Then he went outside and put an arm around the old pirate's shoulders.
Sometimes my parents make me slightly crazed, but the thought of losing either one of them is so unreal that I can't imagine it. I can't even try to imagine it.
All these years, I never considered the possibility that my father-my well-meaning but occasionally whacked-out father-might be walking around with a broken heart, carrying a pain too awful to talk about.
I mean, his mom died when he was a kid. Died.
How could anyone be the same afterward? How could there not be a huge sad hole in your life?
And how could it not get worse when somebody calls up to say that your father's gone, too? The father you idolized-dead and buried in some faraway jungle.
So maybe Dad filled up all that emptiness another way. Whenever he saw something bad or wrong, he'd do just about anything to make it right, no matter how reckless or foolish. It's possible he couldn't help himself.
I think Mom understood. I think that's why she's been so patient through the rough times.
And maybe Dad will be better, now that he knows Grandpa Bobby is really alive. It's something to hope for anyway.
On the afternoon before he left, my grandfather knocked on my bedroom door and said he wanted to go fishing. We grabbed a couple of spinning rods and headed off to Thunder Beach.
The water was crystal clear, and we waded up to our knees. Scads of minnows flashed like chrome spangles in the shallows, and right away we spooked a snaggle-toothed barracuda that had been hanging motionless near a coral head.
Grandpa Bobby started casting a small yellow bucktail, hopping it through the grassy patches where the snappers hang out.
“How are you going back?” I asked.
“Same way I got here. There's a freighter leaving Key West for Aruba tomorrow,” he said. “From there I'll hitch a ride on a banana boat.”
“You sure about this?”
Grandpa Bobby said, “Oh, I'll be fine. Your mom even packed me a suitcase.”
“Not the plaid one?” I asked.
“Yeah. What's so funny?”
“That's the one she takes out whenever she's thinking about dumping Dad.”
“Well, I guess that's not in the game plan anymore.” My grandfather tucked the butt of the fishing rod under one arm and took out another old photograph to show me.
“There she is,” he said proudly.
It was a picture of the Amanda Rose. She was a classic, too.
“That was taken in Cat Cay,” he said. “Summer before you were born.”
“Wow.”
“She's forty-six feet. Twin diesels, eight hundred horses.”
The gleaming sportfisherman was tied stern-first to a wooden dock, where a monster blue marlin hung glassy-eyed from a tall pole. In the picture Grandpa Bobby's curly hair was so long, it looked like a blond Afro. He was poised on the teakwood transom, raising a beer in a toast to the great fish.
“The dirtbags who hijacked my Amanda Rose, they've repainted the hull and changed her name. But that won't fly,” he said confidently, “because I'll recognize her, no matter what.”
“But what if you can't find her?” I asked.
“Oh, I most definitely will, Noah. You can bet the damn ranch on that.” He didn't take his eyes off the photograph. “I built her myself. Started shortly after your grandmother passed on. It was this boat that carried me through those terrible times. That, and raising your daddy and his brother and sister.”
He folded up the snapshot and went back to fishing.
“All this might be tough for you to understand,” he said quietly.
“Not at all.”
“Ten years is ridiculous, Noah. Ten years without so much as a postcard. I'm lucky your father forgave me.”
“I wish I could've seen his face the night you showed up,” I said.
Grandpa Bobby laughed. “Know what he did? He jumped from the truck and snatched me up and swung me 'round in circles like a doll-same as I did to him when he was a little shrimp! He's got some serious muscle on his bones, your old man does. Hey, what's this? Finally somebody got hungry.”
He jerked up on the rod and reeled in a small blue runner, which he tossed back. He caught another one on the very next cast.
“Hey, aren't you gonna fish?” he asked me.
“Sure.” I threw my bucktail into the deeper water and started bouncing it along the bottom.
“How come you're so quiet?” he said.
The truth was, I felt as bummed out as Abbey-I didn't want Grandpa Bobby to go away again. At the same time I didn't want to make him feel guilty by saying so.
He said, “You don't believe I'll ever be back, do you?”
“I'm worried, that's all.” It was impossible not to worry. The knife scar on his cheek was a pretty strong clue that the men my grandfather was chasing were not model citizens.
“Whatever else they say about me, champ, I do keep my promises.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Hey, are you snagged on a rock?”
“No, I don't think so.”
It was a fish. As soon as I set the hook, it smoked thirty yards of line off the spool. Grandpa Bobby whistled.
“Probably just a big jack,” I said.