“Found the portal, did you?”
Both of our jaws dropped. Pa was an ex-cop, a big, tall, blustery guy and while his hair and beard were white, the twinkle in his eye at our expression said nothing was getting past him, even though he was in retirement.
“So, you–?”
“You knew all the–?”
“I shared my life with your grandmother for nearly fifty years. How do you think she’d hide something like a portal from me? I was the one who insisted on the lockable door, to protect anyone who wasn’t her from it. I can let you into her old workroom, girls, but I have no idea where to find the information you’re looking for. She didn’t expect to go, y’know, not yet.”
“Pa . . .” Tess reached over and put her hand over his, eyes glistening.
“How are you holding up, really?” I asked.
“I . . .” Pa dropped his fork into the bowl of sweet and sour pork and rice. “I’m getting by. I go to the pub some nights, catch up with some of the boys. I keep the garden how she liked it, make sure the hydrangeas aren’t getting too leggy.” He stopped and stared at his food as if it held the answers. “This isn’t what we planned, your Nan and I, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”
“It’s OK,” Tess said rubbing his arm.
“It’s not! Sorry, Tessy girl, but it’s not. I spent my life with that woman, woke up every day to her, and went to bed every night with her. I did my best, to be the man she needed me to be, but in the end, it didn’t make any difference. I-I just can’t believe that she’s gone.”
“I meant it’s OK to feel like that,” Tess said. “We miss her, too. I miss talking to her, getting her advice, whether I wanted it or not.” We both chuckled at that. Every time she’s start with, “I know you’re not going to listen to me, but. . . .”
“We should have come around more often,” I said. “I’m sorry, Pa. You’ve always seemed so . . . together. I didn’t think about how this must be making you feel.”
“It’s alright, it just gets to me from time to time. Eat your food and then we’ll go up and have a look.”
Nan’s workroom was on the second floor of her house. During the day, morning light flooded into the room, making it look bright and airy, though it seemed strangely fitting that it was a lot dingier in the evening. Pa pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and went and unlocked a large wooden cupboard, then another, then another. Inside each was hundreds upon hundreds of exercise books. My heart sank looking at them. Tess went over and pulled one out. “1967!” she said, flipping through it briefly before putting it back.
“Do you know what year she put the portal in the shop?” I asked.
Pa took a seat on a low stool by her herb prep table and rubbed at his beard. “Wasn’t in the 70s, that’s when she started the shop. I think . . . it was in the 80s. The New Age crowd had thrown away the patchouli and become yuppies and she needed some way to bring the money in. Yeah, definitely 80
s.”
“So that narrows it down to ten years. So what, is it one book per year?” I asked Tess.
She shook her head and pulled out a huge pile of notebooks, “This is 1979.”
“All of them?”
“I think so. Nope, here’s a couple more.”
I sat down heavily on the wood floor, cross-legged. I shut my eyes and rubbed at the sockets. I was so bloody tired. “Maybe we should come by on the weekend, make a day of it, Tess?”
“Couldn’t we . . .?” Tess’s fingers closed around the bunch of notebooks in her lap reflexively. I let out a long sigh as quietly as I could and held a hand out.
“OK, pass me the 1980 pile.”
Evidently, it was not installed in 1980, ‘81, ‘82 or ‘83. It was getting damn close to ten o’clock, my back ached, my eyes burned and I had had enough.
“Tess . . .”
“I know, I know. I’m just finishing skimming this one.”
“Tess, I’ve got to stop. I am hurting.”
“OK, go downstairs. Sit with Pa, I won’t be long.”
“Tess, we’ve got to get up early tomorrow and open the shop.”