“Anyway,” he continues, “you can figure out that your mom wanted to sue the pants off the woman that caused the accident.”
“She did?” I don’t recall Mom being particularly rabid during that time last year. The grief was too thick.
He nods. “She wanted to take everything.”
“Go big or go home,” I quip dryly. “How’d you talk her down?”
“I pointed out that not too long ago, that could have been her in the car. Tired, stressed, maybe worried about money, with loud, crying kids in the back seat. Racing from one job, to preschool pick-up, then to another job …” Gramps pauses to clear his throat. “It could have been any one of us behind the wheel that day. In either car.”
I scrunch my eyebrows. “So you cut her a break because of all the potential reasons she wasn’t focused on the road?”
Gramps shakes his head and looks at me, tears welling in his eyes. “No, love. I cut her a break because what she has to live with is painful enough, I didn’t need to have her separated from her kids if she ended up going to jail. Honestly, I wish she didn’t have to feel all of that guilt. There’s so much hurt in the world. I cut her a break because … because judgment isn’t mine to hand down. It’s just … not my job.”
Is he … is he talking about God?
I silently watch my grandfather as he sniffs and looks back into the woods. “Nothing I, or the justice system, could have put that woman through would have brought your grandmother back. I just trust that she learned a lesson is all. I don’t want her walking around guilty her whole life, but, maybe her side of the story can help someone someday.”
Yours could too, Gramps.
“So … when you talk about judgment … ” I prompt, nervous about the new level this conversation has the potential to reach.
Gramps smiles and turns back to me. “I think it’s good, that school you’re going to. I may not agree with everything I read about in the news, but the world could use a little less pain, don’t you think?”
“You know most of the kids that come out of there are card-carrying republicans with an agenda against most of the things you stand for, right?” I’m being honest with him, and also reminding myself of the realities of Carter University graduates.
With a broad smile and throaty laugh, Gramps gives me a firm pat on the shoulder. “So change their minds, girl.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “And how, exactly, do you propose I do that?”
He shrugs. “One student at a time.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m hit with Dean Hershel Baker’s words of warning.
You’re a threat …
“It’s a one-hundred-year-old institution, Gramps, with tentacles further than I can reach.” I turn for the door, but his voice stops me.
“Please,” he pleads through a hoarse near-cry.
I turn to find him working furiously trying to avoid sobbing. “What’s wrong?”
Gramps shakes his head. “Don’t give up on that place, or them, Kennedy. You have a good, fierce heart. I see it in your eyes. It’s the same kind of look I had when I entered seminary.”
“Hold up,” I shout, walking back out onto the deck. “Seminary? I’ve been to church with you, like, once. When was this? You and gram were together since high school. What was your plan there?”
“Just after high school,” he admits plainly. “I felt like I was meant for bigger things. It was an Episcopal seminary, so my relationship with your grandmother wasn’t in jeopardy. Turns out, I didn’t have the spine for it.” There’s a long pause before he takes a deep breath. “I really liked Roland, Kennedy. I saw a lot of myself in him, and it was really hard on me and your grandmother when everything happened between him and your mom. It was just … inexplicable. When we tried to pray with your mom about it, she rejected it venomously, and told us when her baby was born she would be the one to filter God for her child. She wanted nothing to do with the God that I had a relationship with.”
I tilt my head in confusion. “But she raised me in the church.”
“She didn’t really have a Plan B, and we didn’t feed her told-you-so’s. She just kept herself at a distance and figured out along the way it was easier to let you make your own choices with God since, according to her, we never gave her that choice. But my point is, I see the same fire in your eyes that he always had. He wasn’t on a pastoral track back then—well, not one he was aware of.” Gramps laugh as if he and God are sharing a private joke. “Anyway, I don’t know what’s ahead for you, Kennedy, but I know you can’t give up. Not on the school, not on God, and not on yourself.”
I’m a bit dizzy from this new grandfather standing before me, talking as if we’ve always had these kinds of revelatory conversations. “Did you ever contact Roland after he and Mom split up?”
Immediately, Gramps eyes shoot to the ground. Guilty.
“Gramps …” I lower my voice, which is shaking again against the sinking feeling in my stomach.
He clears his throat and lifts his chin in the Hamilton Family way. “I trust your confidence in this,” he says, not asks.
I nod anyway.