“Thanks, Gramps, you’re a really great guy. You’ve made my day.”
“You’re welcome. Any time you want to make a fool of yourself, you let me know. I can always use a good laugh.”
He put his club in the bag Luke was holding. “That’s it. We’re going to have lunch and talk.”
“Talk? Any more of your ‘talk’ and you’ll have to prescribe anti-depressants for me. Besides, it’s after four and too late for lunch.”
David squinted his eyes at his grandson. “If you don’t stop that attitude, I’ll take you home to Mary Alice and tell her you’re depressed and she’ll pester you until you start telling her about your childhood traumas and about Ingrid.”
At that name, Luke turned several shades lighter and took a step backward.
A minute later, David had caught a ride with a fellow golfer, and they were on their way back to the clubhouse. Luke didn’t say anything until they were at a table in the corner and his grandfather had ordered them a pot of tea, a plate of sandwiches, and a couple of Jack Daniel’s.
“All right,” David said, “so tell me what you really drove all the way here to ask me about.”
“There seem to be some big differences from what people believe to be true about Miss Edi and what is real.”
“Are you talking about the lack of money or the fact that she and I broke off our engagement before we both left for World War II?”
Luke looked at his grandfather with an open mouth. “Broke off your engagement?” he whispered.
“Why are young people so surprised to hear that people in the past also had secrets? Did you forget that I was the town doctor? Back in the sixties there was an outbreak of gonorrhea in town, and I knew who gave it to whom. I never said a word. And there was—”
“What was Miss Edi really like?” Luke asked, cutting his grandfather off. He didn’t want to know more about people’s private lives than he already did.
“Perfect,” David said. “Never a hair out of place. Never a word spoken that she’d regret. She was strong, forceful, and knew what she wanted.”
“You don’t sound as though you liked her very much.”
“I adored her. When we were toddlers Alex McDowell kept taking my toys—until Edi bashed him on the head with a wooden block, and he never bothered me again. She was a lady all her life. You do know, don’t you, that she dedicated her life to helping burn victims?”
“I heard something about it.”
“It was more than you can imagine. She hooked up with Dr. Nigel Brenner, and they traveled the world together. Edi handled everything. Twice she got them out of countries that had overnight become war zones. Both times, Nigel’s nurses were hysterical, but Edi never lost her courage or her wit, and she got them to safety.”
“But you married Nana Mary Alice,” Luke said.
David smiled. “Feisty, funny, sexy Mary Alice Welsch. Until Edi left the country, I hadn’t even noticed her. When I came back from the war with a wound in my shoulder that threatened to make me lose my arm, there she was. You know what her best medicine was?”
“If you tell me sex, I
’m leaving,” Luke said.
“Laughter. She made me laugh, especially at myself.”
“To this day, the old-timers think—”
“That Mary Alice bewitched me and that she was little better than a harlot for seducing me away from Edi? She loves that. I wanted to tell people the truth, but Mary Alice said she liked being thought of as a man stealer. She said it made her seem sexy, like a movie star.”
Luke had to laugh because that sounded just like something his grandmother would say. She was a cookie baker; she was always ready to help anyone who needed it, and she was as far from being a “man stealer” as could be. Yes, he could see his grandmother liking being thought of as a sexpot.
“Are you going to tell me what Edi’s past has to do with you, or am I going to have to order more of these little sandwiches?” David asked.
“It’s this girl…” Luke looked down at his drink. He’d hardly touched it.
“You like her, don’t you?” David asked, his voice changing from teasing to serious.
“Yeah, I do. She went to a nothing college just so she could be near Miss Edi. Tess showed me some background on Joce, and with her grades she could have gone anywhere, but she didn’t.”