I haven’t seen or heard a peep from Jackson since I fired him two days ago. No response to my email either. I hope he got it. I know he doesn’t check his messages often.
Clancy isn’t exactly at the top of my want-to-see people list. I still don’t know how to feel after discovering his love lettersto Grandpa Rick. I stopped reading after the first letter. It felt like an invasion of privacy to keep going. But I’m dying to know the full story. Was Clancy cheating on his wife? Was Grandpa cheating on Grandma? Are the Benson men genetically cursed to be adulterers?
I storm into the living room after him and freeze when I see the way he’s staring at the place. It’s like he’s been transported back in time. He presses a hand to his heart, eyes wide with wonder. “It’s been decades since I last set foot here.”
I leave him alone with his memories and dash into the spare room to grab the bundles of letters. “I believe these are yours,” I say, setting them on the coffee table.
He drops to his knees, mouth agape, as he rifles through them. “Oh my god. I can’t believe he kept them. I was sure…”
He trails off, piling a batch onto his lap as he takes a seat in the recliner. He plucks the top letter and starts reading it.
I comb my fingers through my hair, unsure how to proceed from here. We have two very big unresolved issues to deal with, but the old man is getting teary as he reads, so I’m not about to be an asshole and ruin his moment.
I take out my phone and text Candice, apologizing that something unexpected has come up yet again and asking if we can reschedule and catch up later tonight. Clancy and I need to talk, and it could take a while. She messages back that it’s fine. I am going to have to buy her something very expensive for how great she’s being about everything.
“Can I get you a drink, Clancy?”
“No. I’m fine. Thank you,” he says without looking up.
His voice is back to the normal voice I’ve come to know over the past few months. Every trace of the anger he marched in here with has melted away.
After giving him some time, I speak up. “I know it’s none of my business, but…”
Clancy pulls his gaze away from the letters and lifts his eyes to mine, shaking his head as though he’d forgotten I was here. “We were in love.”
“You and Grandpa Rick?”
“That’s right.”
“What about Grandma?”
“She knew.”
“She did?”
Clancy tucks the letters carefully by his side. “It was a different time. A lot of things were changing for the better, like women’s rights, but when it came to sexuality, attitudes were still very conservative. The language we have today didn’t even exist back then. Growing up, your grandfather would visit Silverstone in the summer, much like you did. He loved horses. That’s how we met. At my father’s rescue center. Rick and I became friends, keeping in touch via letters throughout the year, excitedly awaiting the summer when we could go camping and fishing and…” His face takes on a rosy hue.
“Yeah, I don’t need to know the rest.”
Clancy smiles, but a wistful sadness lingers in his eyes. “He loved it here so much that after high school, he moved in with his grandfather, who was running the winery. Things between us continued, but the pressure for us to marry and have children was intense, not only socially, but also because we both came from families that owned businesses and needed to have children to pass them down to.
“I started seeing Constance, and she was best friends with your grandma. We set her up with Rick, and it was a good match. We double-dated together. Got married the same summer, a few weeks apart. Even started popping out kids at close intervals.”
“Did both women know?”
“Absolutely.” Clancy shakes his head vigorously. “We told them right from the very beginning.”
“And were they cool with it?”
“In their own ways, yes. I think it helped that we were up-front about it. Rick and I would go away on our ‘camping trips,’ which they understood was us spending quality time together. But they also knew that we both deeply loved them. Again, we didn’t have the awareness about these sorts of things that people have now. There was no internet or easy way to access information. I didn’t even know what bisexual meant until I was in my thirties. Now, you have open marriages and poly this and poly that. It wasn’t like that back then. In a small town like Silverstone, it was all very clandestine. We had to be very careful to ensure no one found out. It made it feel wrong, but at the same time, when Rick and I were together, it felt right.”
“Wow.”
Clancy offers a friendly smile. “Wow indeed. Constance tragically passed away before her time, and your grandparents helped me get through it. Your grandmother and I became very close friends.”
“I take it you and Grandpa Rick continued your…thing?”
“We did. It was a little harder to get away once Jackson’s mom left and the kids moved in with me, but we still did from time to time. Your grandmother only had two conditions. The first one was that we spent our time together away from Silverstone. Hence the camping trips. And the second one was that no one found out about us. Ever.” The color drains from his face.
