“Help you do what?”
I blinked, remembering that Jason Walcott, like most others, still assumed my grandfather had killed himself.
“Help me understand why he would do what he did,” I hedged, not wanting to express to him that I believed my grandfather’s death was a result of foul play and not him taking his own life.
Walcott shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jodi. I’ve had a few clients who’ve taken their own lives. Some of them, doing so, in the face of what seemed like a perfect life. Nobody would’ve suspected they had any reason not to want to live. These things are sometimes a mystery.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe that. “I’m well aware that depression or mental illness is often disguised or overlooked, but I’m trying to find out what the warning signs were. Did I miss something?”
Sighing, he stared down at his desk. “Look, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this much, but I will say, your grandfather came to see me more often in the last month before his death. Typically, we only met once a year to go over his will and estate, make any updates if necessary. However, in the last month of his life, we met twice. He wanted to update his will. The stock market had performed well, and he had personal savings that he never touched. Life insurance he received after your grandmother died. He chose to put that in your name instead of your mother’s.”
I nodded, already knowing that in addition to his home, my grandfather had left me a portion of his life’s savings. Though, my mother had received the bulk of his investments. He knew she wouldn’t have wanted the property in Texas. We discussed it often. My mother left Texas before the ink was dry on her high school diploma. She moved to New York, soon after met my father, and the only time she came back was to drop me off and pick me up for the summers.
My heart sank a little deeper remembering those conversations with my grandfather. Would he be disappointed to know I was thinking of selling the house? He never told me explicitly that he intended for me to keep it, or remain in Texas. He always left the choice up to me.
“Do you think it’s significant or bad that he came to see you twice in the month before he died?”
“Bad? I wouldn’t go that far. I will say it was out of the ordinary. While he wanted to make some changes to his estate planning, one of the meetings was more or less a review of where he stood and making sure all of his bases were covered.”
I parted my lips to ask another question, but Jason held up his hand to stop me.
“That’s all I can say for now. I’m bound by the laws of the state and my oath to keep my conversations with your grandfather private.”
I clamped my lips shut and thought for a minute. “Okay, I’m not asking you specifically what you and my grandfather talked about but, I have one more question. If I were to ask you to speculate, given what you knew about him, what do you think it meant for my grandfather to visit you twice in the month before his death?”
Sitting back in his chair, Jason steepled his fingers as he looked across the desk at me. He appeared as if he were warring with himself to say what was really on his mind.
“Please, Jason. I want to know what could’ve possibly been going through my grandfather’s head in the last few weeks of his life. I wasn’t here to see him. He didn’t have many friends, most of them died or moved away over the years. Do you think he was lonely?”
I wanted this man’s opinion. He was one of the last people who I knew that’d seen my grandfather. Sure, I’d spoken with him in the days before his death, but what if I missed something? That tin in his kitchen told me that there had been something my grandfather was withholding from me.
“He did look a little thinner than the last time I’d seen him.”
I wrinkled my brows. “Like, sickly?”
He gave a slight nod. “Not so much as to be worrying. At least, not at the time, but now that I think about it, he was thinner. Maybe a little paler. But it was the end of winter. We’re all a little pale at that time of year.”
I nodded but kept quiet as my mind wondered what this all meant. It could’ve been nothing, but my grandfather had always been a robust man. He stood as six-feet two inches, and he loved to eat. He was a great cook. He rarely missed any meals, but perhaps Jason was right. It could’ve been the time of year. Or a sign of the depression that caused him to take his life.
I stood. “Thank you, Jason. This meeting has been helpful. I’ll contact you if I need anything else.” I held up the two business cards he’d given me.
He stood and walked me to the door.
I walked out of Jason’s office, feeling more confused than when I’d entered. I’d been sure my grandfather’s death involved foul play. But what if I was making it all up in my head because it was too painful to contend with the idea that the man I loved so much had been desperate enough to take his own life?
As I returned to the house, I grew anxious, not knowing where to go from there. Needing to do something with all that anxiety, I opted for a workout. After dropping my bag and kicking off my sneakers by the door, I headed down the hallway to my room. I changed from the jeans and blouse I’d worn to the lawyer’s office, into a pair of biker shorts and sports bra.
Next, I went into my grandfather’s bedroom and picked up the dumbbells I spotted underneath his bed a few days ago, before heading back into the living room. I made quick work of pushing the coffee table out of the way and bringing up the Youtube workout I planned to do on the mounted television. The smart TV had been another gift from me to my grandfather a year earlier.
Remembering how I had to help him set the damn thing up over the phone, I grinned. In the end, I had to call and send a tech guy out from the store where I purchased it to help him. But once it was all programmed and he learned how to work it, he loved that he could easily pull up his favorite shows.
We often watched football games together on the nights I had off.
About twenty minutes into my workout, I began feeling hot, so I paused the video and pulled open the front door, propping the screen door open with the overhead lever. Then I moved into the kitchen and opened the sliding glass door. The mesh screen door allowed for a breeze to enter the house without letting in bugs. The cross breeze from having both doors open was what I needed.
A sweaty thirty minutes later, I felt invigorated. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I chose to step outside on the back porch to finish my cool down and to stretch outdoors. It was still late morning, around eleven-thirty, and the temperature was already in the low-seventies. Within the next few hours, it’d likely get as high as eighty, even though it was only mid-April.
I looked out into the distance, observing the blue skies and the green hills that were so prominent all over central Texas. That view brought back fond memories.
