Read Online Some Kind of Hell by London Casey - Free Book Online Page B

before.
    I stumbled to my phone and my hands shook as I opened the calendar.
    Right there, yesterday, was the little note. The note telling me to call him. The note I would have seen if I had looked a hundred times like I usually did.
    Maggie knocked on the inside of my wall and said, “Good morning! I have to tal-”
    “I forgot to call my grandfather!” I cried out. “Yesterday. I told him I would.”
    “Calm down,” Maggie said. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
    “How do you know?” I asked. “Did you talk to him?”
    “Whoa,” Maggie said. “First, you need coffee. Then, you need to call him. And after that, I need to talk to you.”
    Maggie put her hands up and slowly backed away.
    I opened my mouth to apologize for being so crazy, but I didn’t say a thing. My own guilt bothered me. Maggie disappeared into her room as I had a sip of coffee. I dialed my grandfather, knowing he’d be awake. By ten in the morning he would have been awake for at least five hours.
    I waited as the phone rang.
    I hated waiting.
    I feared the worst.
    He wasn’t there.
    He was at the hospital.
    There was an emergency and nobody called me.
    “Hello?” his voice boomed.
    I sighed and smiled.
    “Grandpa!” I yelled. “How are you?”
    “Ah, there she is,” he said. “My Annie Girl.”
    “I’m so sorry I forgot to call you yesterday.”
    “Yesterday? What was yesterday?”
    “I said...”
    “Was it my birthday?” my grandfather asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “Was it Father’s Day?”
    “No.”
    “How about Christmas?”
    “No...”
    “Then nothing to be sorry about.”
    It filled me with warmth. My grandfather always had a way to make the worst moments seem okay, that life would move forward, no matter what. It was powerful to think about at a young age but beautiful to love through as his age.
    “How are you feeling?” I asked.
    “I’m good,” he said, forcing his voice to go high to sound normal.
    The reality was that his voice was weak. Tired. Worn out.
    It was all part of the ordeal, that’s what my mother told me. She was his caretaker and I was glad she had someone there with her in the house I didn’t think she’d ever recover when my father left her - and me.
    “Don’t lie to me,” I said. “I can hear your voice.”
    “I slept in,” my grandfather said.
    That bothered me more than if he had just said he wasn’t feeling well and was tired.
    “You never sleep in.”
    “I do once in a while,” he said. “Are you happy, Annie?”
    The question was loaded and caught me off guard. It stole my breath for a second. I couldn’t lie to my grandfather. Ever.
    My silence began to give the answer I feared I’d have to give.
    “You know,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about me.”
    “Is that so?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I’m fine, Annie, just fine.”
    “You’re not fine. You had or still have cancer.”
    “I got a call yesterday, Annie,” my grandfather said. His tone was smooth and calm, the voice he used when leading into a story. “A friend of mine, Jerry, who I used to see and talk to at the gym all the time died yesterday. Just... just like that. Dead.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s hard.”
    “No. That’s life. Annie, you’re young. You have the world staring at you and it’s endless. So many things to do. So many people to meet. Chances to fall in love, get hurt, do it all over again. At my age, it’s not like that at all. The world is smaller to me, confined to those I love because someday - hopefully not soon - I won’t see everyone again. It can be cancer that does it or it can be a heart attack, just like Jerry.”
    I didn’t need to reply. I understood what he meant. How precious life was to him and how he didn’t fear death. Not for a second. My mother and I were the ones crying like fools when we found out about his cancer. But not him. He stood strong and while he didn’t have the forced confidence to say he was going to destroy it, he wasn’t afraid to