“You’re… what? Fifty-five?” I scoffed. “That’s still pretty young. Besides, you’ll always be young in my heart.”
She rewarded me with a sideways grin. “My, it’s getting thick around here.”
“I mean it. You look awesome.”
“And you still say the sweetest things.”
We shared a smile of genuine warmth. Then she gestured toward her car and started walking. She’d finally traded her trusty old station wagon for a new Jeep Cherokee. It looked exactly like the one I’d bought a decade earlier.
“Some things never go out of style,” I mused aloud. “Just like some women.”
I threw my garment bag into the back and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Not that I mind,” Susan said as she pulled out of the parking lot, “but is there a reason you’re being so appreciative?”
“Just being polite,” I said. “But… maybe it’s ’cause I realize how lucky I am. I mean, you saw something in me all those years ago.”
“The constant erection?” she teased.
“Well, yeah. But I hope it was more.”
“Oh, it was. I don’t remember the specifics, though. They’re lost to time.”
“Like everything else,” I agreed. “But still… some things haven’t changed.”
“Such as?”
“How I feel about you.”
“Well, the feeling’s mutual.” She rewarded me with a smile, and we drove in companionable silence until she turned onto the road to town instead of the one that led to Granville’s.
“He had to sell the big house,” she explained.
“Why?”
“Money.”
“I thought he had family money,” I said. “The Blair fortune. I always assumed…”
Susan shook her head. “It was mostly gone by the time he inherited, and he always lived beyond his means. He mortgaged the house—twice, as a matter of fact—and he couldn’t afford the upkeep anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope the new owner appreciates its history.”
Susan pursed her lips. “Oh, she does.”
“Wait… You bought it? Why?”
“The price was right, although it needed a lot of repairs. And…” She glanced sideways. “I had to renovate it for what I wanted. I hope you don’t mind that I used a local architect. You and Trip were busy in Atlanta.”
“It’s fine. Did you turn it into a B&B or something?”
“No, even better. It’s a group home for battered women. Fitting, don’t you think?”
I chuckled. Granville had never abused women physically, but he was a diehard (and oblivious) member of the patriarchy. His brand of sexism wasn’t a felony or even a misdemeanor, but it was abuse all the same.
“Truth be told,” Susan said, “I’ll be sorry to see him go. We never saw eye to eye on women’s rights, but he was a good man in many ways.”
“He was,” I agreed.
“Still is,” she amended.
She parked in front of a tidy postwar house that looked like it belonged in rural England more than a small town in South Carolina. Granville’s long-time housekeeper answered the door. Beatrice greeted Susan warmly and then made a fuss over me as she took our jackets.
“I didn’t believe it when he tol’ me you was coming,” she said in tones of pure molasses.
“Susan called, and I came,” I said.
“I bought lemons, jus’ in case. I’ll fetch you a lemonade. Fresh squeezed, like you like. And for you, Mrs. MacLean?”
“Please, Bea, you’ve known me forty years. It’s about time you call me Susan.”
“M’yes’m,” Beatrice said without any intention of doing so. “Sweet tea? With a touch o’ lemon?” She made it sound like a question, but she clearly knew what Susan liked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Bea?” Granville called from the next room. “Show our visitors into the parlor.” His voice was reedy and weak with age, but still full of southern character.
“Go on in,” Beatrice said. “I’ll bring yo’ drinks.”
The “parlor” was really the living room of the small house. I suspected that Beatrice kept the master bedroom for Granville and lived in the spare bedroom instead.
Granville himself looked much the same as I’d seen him last, although his monogrammed shirt was rumpled and stained, and his bowtie was a clip-on. I couldn’t hold it against him, though, since he was confined to a hospital bed. His body matched his voice, thin and weak, and his white hair was limp instead of the mane it had once been.
Beatrice brought our drinks and then disappeared into the back of the house. Susan and I sat and talked with Granville for an hour, although he did most of the talking. He was still a windbag, still a narcissist. Some things never change, after all. He knew he was dying, though.
“Cirrhosis,” he said. “I say, I tried to get a transplant up in Charlotte, but they judged I wasn’t a good candidate.”
“I’m sorry to hear,” I said.
He waved it away. “I’m too old to change. It’s time for your generation, my boy. Well, yours and Susan’s. Why, I remember when she was just a girl. Now, her father and I…”
We listened for another half-hour, until Beatrice interrupted.
“You need to rest a little, Mr. Granville, before you have yo’ dinner.”
“It’s Wednesday,” he said to us. “Bea’s made pork chops and collard greens, haven’t you, Bea?”
“M’yessir.”
“It smells delicious,” Susan said graciously. “We’d love to stay, but Paul’s doing some work for me at home.”
It was a polite fiction, but Granville nodded like he was my mentor again. Beatrice simply looked grateful. I suspected that his reduced fortune didn’t cover things like groceries for entertaining. We said our goodbyes and promised to visit again.
Granville wasn’t entirely coherent when we saw him the next day. Still, he smiled when I patted his hand. The hospice nurse arrived while we were there, and she explained in the hall that his liver and kidneys were shutting down. Beatrice wrung her hands as she listened.
Susan asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“No’m, but thank you.”
“Do you have somewhere to go? When the time comes?”
“This here house,” Beatrice said. “He lef’ it to me in his will.”
Granville lapsed into unconsciousness that evening and died peacefully in his sleep the following afternoon.
I felt a sense of loss, but I didn’t shed any mawkish tears. And I certainly didn’t have any illusions that he’d molded me into the man I was today. My parents, Susan, and Joska deserved credit for that. Still, Granville had definitely been a mentor and an ally when I’d needed it most.
He was a complicated man, difficult to like but impossible to hate. In the end, he’d been my friend, warts and all.
* * *
Susan and I spent most of Saturday walking the camp and talking business. She’d become a regular tycoon over the past decade. She’d expanded her hotel and real estate empire, of course, but she’d made even more money in the stock market. She’d invested in computer and tech companies based on her son Doug’s advice, and her investments had paid off, big time. She’d reinvested the profits, and her net worth had snowballed from there.
The camp itself was a different story. It hadn’t changed much at all, not since Trip and I had done the last major renovation back in the mid-eighties. A local contractor had built six more bungalows at the Retreat, plus a fitness center and laundry, but that had been the only new construction in a decade.
At least the maintenance was up to code, although I felt a surge of anger when Susan told me about her current manager. The woman had been a plumber before her husband had accused her of being a dyke. He was a Southern Man, by God, and her very existence was a threat to his manhood. So he’d beaten her with a steel pipe and left her for dead. He’d eventually gone to prison for it, while she’d gone through a year of rehab and reconstructive surgery.