Truth.
I grinned at the screen. Every once in a while, he surprised me.
The next few hours were a series of volleys between myself and Blake. We worked well as a team, and since the cove, we’d had a tenuous break in the tension between us.
The information gleaned in the diary was sketchy at best. It mostly seemed filled with gossip and code. My grandmother had odd little names for people, and she had ebbed and flowed on the frequency of her updates.
Sometimes it was nearly daily, and other times there were months between entries.
I recognized a few of the code names from living with Annabelle, but some were downright maddening. I knew they were people from Marblehead, but I couldn’t decipher her more cutting remarks.
And to be honest, learning about this side of my grandmother made my stomach hurt. The problem with diaries is that they’re truly never meant to be read. Private thoughts are definitely not politically correct.
Especially hers.
Frank dissertations about sex, politics, and the spending habits of the moneyed elite of Marblehead were especially eye-opening.
The fact that I knew far more about my grandmother’s sex life as well was a bit harder to read. She’d been enamored with two different younger men.
They didn’t even get real names. A simple B and B2 were listed. B was well over fifteen years ago.
She also spoke of a boy who was fascinated with me. Summers had been spent at my hometown’s school until I’d been old enough to get into advanced art programs.
I was racking my brain to remember any boy who had taken a special interest in me, but my memory was just blank. When I got involved with glass, I became pretty well blind to all other things. Especially in the timespan that my grandmother documented.
On the cusp of my teen years. God.
There’d been nothing more important than my stained glass at the time. I vaguely remembered teaching a class, but so many kids came and went in the summer.
Some were just there on a week’s vacation with families, some were summer townies, and others were bussed in from surrounding towns as part of a program.
I’d stopped studying the faces and concentrated on my own work.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?” I looked up.
Blake stood in front of my desk. “I’ve been messaging you for twenty minutes.”
“What?” I looked down, and sure enough, there were half a dozen lines about the lunch meeting with Jack. “Sorry.”
“Are you ready?”
I pushed back my chair and opened my drawer. I took out my laptop and iPad, then transferred them to the Vera Bradley case I’d brought from home.
I had visions of me drop-kicking the tablet down the stairs every time I rushed behind Blake and Jack. Long-legged freaks always left me in the dust.
Case in point, right now.
Blake crossed the room and held open the door. Jack was already in the hall with him.
“Come on, short stuff,” Jack said through the open door.
I rolled my eyes and passed by Blake. He followed me, crowding me into the stairwell. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying to cop a cheap feel. Unfortunately, it was just that my boss was always in a rush.
The fact that his wool slacks brushed against my butt was incidental.
Mostly.