I was surprised when he got off the highway at a residential area, then I realized it was the same area we’d gotten off at together when we went to the flower market. What was he up to?
I tailed him along numerous streets until he arrived right at the very same old house that I’d wanted to stop at last time. I parked down the street and watched him. What was going on? He got out of his car and greeted the orphan boys I’d spoken to when I was there. Then he took the For Sale sign out of the ground and threw it into the back of his car. I wanted to get out and find out what was going on, but I was torn between being discovered and maintaining my cover. I mean, technically, I was still mad at him. Although I did find it hard to stay mad at him. I had no idea what he’d said to Rob, what the circumstances of their conversation had been, or who’d initiated it, but with every passing minute, I realized more and more that he’d been right. Rob wasn’t the man for me, and if Grant had decided to do something about that, he’d probably had a good reason for it.
In fact, I was grateful. I didn’t want to marry Rob. Whatever led to him calling off the wedding was a good thing. I’d felt so free and full of relief since finding out. I knew it was only my own stubbornness that made me mad at Grant. I couldn’t admit that I’d been losing control of my life and that whatever he’d done had been a help.
I decided to swallow my pride and find out what was going on. I locked my car and walked up to the house.
“Hey,” I said to one of the boys who was on the porch. “What’s going on here?”
Grant was inside the house with the rest of the boys.
“Lacey?” the boy on the porch said.
“Yes,” I said, too startled to ask how he knew my name.
“Grant explained everything to us. Don’t worry. We’re all in school, and we’re all going to graduate. I swear it.”
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Arnold. I’m the one Grant put in charge. I already had the heat and power hooked up. The water is running. The internet and cable guys are coming today. We’re going to make this work.”
“Make what work?”
The boy smiled, as if he knew I was asking a rhetorical question and already knew the answer.
“Everything, Lacey. We’re going to make you real proud of us. Whatever your father did for Grant and the other brothers, we want you to do for us, and we won’t let you down. You won’t find another group of kids more committed than we are.”
It was at that moment that Grant stepped out of the front door.
“Lacey,” he said, obviously surprised to see me.
“Grant,” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Grant told Arnold to go wait inside with the others. Then he came down the steps of the porch to me.
“This was supposed to be a surprise,” he said.
“For when?”
“For when you weren’t mad at me,” he said, sheepishly.
I smiled. “I’m already not mad at you.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “I don’t know what happened between you and Rob, but I’ve decided I don’t want to know. Whatever it was, it was guy stuff.”
“Well,” he said, obviously relieved, “that’s great.”
“Now, tell me what on earth are you up to here?”
“What you said, when we were here. It got me thinking,” he said. “I could tell you wanted to help these boys.”
I thought back to the last time I’d been there. It was true. I had wanted to help. “I did,” I said.
“Well, now you can. In fact, you already have. You bought this house.”
“I what?”
“It’s in your name. The paperwork will be arriving at your lawyer’s office on Monday.”
“I bought this house? Why?”
“Because you’re your father’s daughter.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your father changed my life. He changed Jackson’s, and Forrester’s, and Grady’s too. He saved us.”
“But what’s that got to do with me?”
“Well, when I was watching you here the other day, I knew you had the same impulse inside you. The same goodness that was in your father is in you, and I thought it would make you happy to be able to show it by helping out these boys, and others like them.”
“So you bought this house?”
“I bought this house, I got services connected, and I promised these boys that you and I would teach them the things they’ll need to know to make themselves successful.”
“Wow.”
“And I told the boys, if they want to live here, they’ll have to stay in school.”
“Grant, that’s … I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, Lacey. The hard work is yet to come. Keeping them to their word.”
“But you’ve made a start.”
“For you.”
“For me?”
“It wasn’t just your father who saved me and the other brothers, Lacey. It was you too. You inspired us. You told us we could keep going when we wanted to give up. Remember when I dropped out in my senior year? Who was it that convinced me to go back?”
“Me.”
“And who convinced Forrester to keep working with that parol officer when he first got here?”