Chapter 5: Grandpa's Table

Henry looked at me for a long second.

Then one corner of his mouth went up.

"Let them check in," he repeated. "All right."

He opened the passenger door for me.

"Your grandfather is expecting us for dinner. He said if I brought you home hungry, he'd have me shot."

Grandpa's house in Cherry Hills Village sat at the end of a long drive lined with bare cottonwoods.

He was standing in the open front door when we pulled up, in his gray three-piece suit, leaning on the cane with the brass top.

I got out of the car and walked straight into him, and he held on to me with his free arm for a long time.

"There she is," Harold Langley said into my hair. "There's my girl."

"Hi, Grandpa."

He pushed me back and looked at my left hand.

Then he looked at Henry, coming up the steps with my mother's jewelry box under one arm.

"You were on time," Grandpa said.

"I was early, sir. Two hours."

"Good. Your grandfather was always late. It drove me crazy for sixty years."

The housekeeper had set three places at the end of the long dining table, close together, the way we used to eat when it was just the two of us.

Grandpa ate very little and watched me eat everything.

Halfway through dinner, he put his fork down.

"Now," he said. "The travel contract."

Henry looked up.

I set my glass down.

"What travel contract?" Henry asked.

Grandpa nodded at me. "Tell him. He's your husband. He should hear it from you."

So I told him.

Two years ago, in March, Dorrance Travel was three weeks from missing payroll.

Bryce didn't tell me. I found out because I saw the bank alerts on his laptop.

So I drove out here one Sunday and asked my grandfather for a favor.