Saving Grace

Chapter Fourteen: Twisted Fates

"You know what his task was, don't you?" Gracie demanded, taking her usual seat at the counter watching her grandfather move stealthily around the kitchen. Every morning she woke up just as surprised as the day before that he hadn't taken off during the night like he was so prone to do. She was patiently waiting for the day when she would have to hold her brother as he sobbed into her arms and promise him once more that she would never leave him.

Grandpa Kurt gave no indication that he was in any way surprised by the question. He'd felt her prying gaze for days, wondering when she would just get it over with and ask him. He stood over the stove making an omelet for her, nodding his head slightly. "Yes. He told me what was going on. We weren't on as bad of terms as he may have led you to believe," her grandfather responded, grabbing a plate and scraping the egg concoction onto it.

"Are you gonna tell me what it was?" she asked, slightly irritably, as he opened the oven and pulled out a glass pan filled with shoestring potatoes, and piled them beside the other food he'd cooked for their breakfast.

Grandpa Kurt sighed, setting her plate gently on the counter, and coming around to sit next to her with a plate of his own. Charlie had spent the night over at Clara's so it was just the two of them that morning. "Edgar McQueen asked him to look for a snitch. Someone's been leaking information to people with enough power to destroy all of our lives. It was supposed to have been a secret but rumors spread that the McQueens were looking for a rat and people have been pointing fingers and getting murdered for their accused involvement-"

"Accused?" Gracie asked skeptically.

"That was why he killed himself," Grandpa Kurt told her, his look laden with silent answers. If she were smart enough, she would figure it out on her own, of that, he was confident.

It didn't take her long. "But why would-"

"Think about it, Grace. If you stole millions of dollars from an almost century old gang, don't you think they'd start coming after you or your family once they figured out what your were up to?"

"So he started selling secrets to the feds?" she asked, her voice just above a whisper. Grandpa Kurt gave a firm nod as he shoveled food into his mouth. He was planning on taking Charlie out of school for the day and taking him to a few of his favorite restaurants in the city before they were supposed to go to Sybil's comedy performance later that night.

"You can't go getting yourself involved with this, ya hear me, kid? I'm not telling you this crap so you can go and get yourself killed. I'm telling you this, so that you know your father's sacrifice and won't let it go to waste. Going out the way he did was no way to treat you or Murray, but he gave you a chance at starting your lives over. Don't forget that."

Gracie nodded her head mutely, taking petite bites of the food her grandfather had prepared. "I won't," she mumbled finally, meaning it. She would never forget the night she found her daddy laying in a pool of his own blood.

After a long beat of silence Grandpa Kurt said, "Good. What're you doing today?" He and Charlie had been consistent in asking her to spend time with them, but she always refused. Her excuse was that it was their chance to hang out and she didn't want to impede, but the truth was she just didn't want to grow to love him again. There were enough people coming and going in her life to give into that bitter temptation.

"School, Visionary, Rocco's," she answered, shoving the last bits of potatoes into her mouth when she saw what time it was and reaching down to grab her book bag.

"I'll see you tonight, then," the old man muttered, keeping his gaze trained on the plate as Gracie trudged out the front door almost an hour earlier than usual.