Lavender Morning (Edilean 1)

One time Luke had a fight with the football coach that threatened to get him kicked off the team. His father had been so angry he’d sent Luke to his room at ten o’clock in the morning and told him to stay there until he could figure out what to do with him. At noon, Granpa Joe appeared at the window of Luke’s second-floor bedroom. He was on a ladder. He didn’t say a word, just lent Luke a hand as they went down the ladder, then to the lake to spend the rest of the day fishing. At six that evening, Luke was back in his room, and when his father came in, he didn’t know that his own father had taken Luke out.

It had always been like that with Granpa Joe, but not with his mother’s father. Besides being a doctor, Granpa Dave was a deacon at church, a Mason, and beloved by everyone.

But for Luke, there had never been the closeness that he’d had with his other grandfather.

Luke drove onto Highway 5, into Williamsburg, then into the Governor’s Land at Two Rivers. It was an upscale country club community, with 60 percent of the land left open for its residents to use. Best of all, there was a huge golf course that his grandfather played on nearly every day. As he knew he would be, Luke found his grandfather on the course, at the fifth tee.

“I wondered when you were going to come see me,” David Aldredge said as he looked down the green. “So how is she?”

“Who?” Luke asked. “Do you mean your daughter? My mother?”

David swung, and the ball went flying in exactly the direction he wanted it to. “If you want to play games, this is going to take a long time. Shall we start again? How is she?”

When his grandfather started walking, Luke hoisted the big golf bag. His grandfather didn’t believe in carts or caddies—but he did believe in young, healthy grandsons carrying the golf bag. “I guess you mean Jocelyn,” Luke said.

“I heard that was her name, but not living in Edilean anymore, I don’t get all the gossip I used to. However, I did hear that you’ve been spending pretty much all your time with her. Some people were saying you’re even spending your nights there.”

“People talk too much and they tell lies.”

“So it’s Ramsey who’s been sleeping with her.”

“He has not!” Luke said. “Rams has only been—” He broke off as he g

lanced at his grandfather. “I think there’s an eleventh commandant that says grandparents aren’t allowed to ridicule their grandkids.”

“I’ll tell you a little-known secret. On the day the first grandkid is born, we get a handbook that says we get to do whatever we want to the kid just to torture our own children.”

“I can’t wait to read the book.”

“At your age, you may be too old to get children, much less grandchildren.”

“Gramps, you’re making me feel so much better.”

“Always happy to oblige,” David said as he stopped where his ball had landed. “So what’s made you so gloomy today?”

Luke put his hands in his pants pockets. “Nothing. No one. Just thought I’d stop by and see you.”

David hit the ball hard, sent it sailing, then looked at his grandson as they started walking. “Okay, so tell me what she’s like.”

“You mean Jocelyn?”

“Yeah, Rams’s girlfriend. What’s she like?”

“She’s not—” Again, Luke took a breath. “Remind me to get you yet another tie for Christmas. Something really ugly. Jocelyn is nice.”

“That’s it? She’s ‘nice’? So where’s the passion? You don’t want to jump her bones?”

“Vulgar grandparents make me queasy.”

“Oh, right. Your generation knows all about sex, but mine doesn’t. For your information, your grandmother and I—”

Luke put his hand up. “Don’t even think of recounting what you and Mary Alice Welsch did. That story is still being told fifty years later.”

“Forty years,” David said.

“Sixty-three, but who’s counting?”

David leaned on his club and looked at his grandson. “Okay, so what’s eating you so bad that you left tilling the soil to come all the way into Williamsburg?”