Hailey shook her head, her voice trembling. “And I wish I could give you answers, but I can’t…”
“It’s not Jillian,” Grant shook his head, and a flood of tears seemed to come before he could stop them.
“Okay,” Hailey said softly. “Then what is it, Grant?” She kissed his hand.
“It’s you,” Grant gulped.
“Me?” Hailey asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Grant cried, “I just don’t understand how someone so perfect could love someone like me…and I guess I’m just afraid that I know my answer… it’s because you don’t really know me …”
“I know the real you,” Hailey gulped. “I know the real you, Grant. That is how I get through this…the roid rage, the outbursts…the awful things you have said to me and everyone else who loves you.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about some of the things I’ve done in the past,” Grant confessed.
“You can’t change the things you did in the past.” Hailey shook her head. “That is not who you are anymore. People can change, Grant, and you have.”
“What if I told you that what Paul accused me of was all true?” Grant shrugged. “Would you still feel like you really knew me? Would you still love me?”
“Paul had no right to look at any of your private information,” Hailey said defensively.
“That’s not what I asked you,” Grant replied.
“I have never needed to be protected from you, Grant,” Hailey smiled. “I don’t care what you did in the past…it won’t change the way I feel about you. I’m in love with you.”
Grant reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box of matches. “Maybe you should hear the truth and then decide…” He tossed Hailey the box of matches and swiped at his own tears. Hailey stared questioningly at the matches in her hand. “It was a box of matches just like those,” Grant said.
“It was an accident…whatever happened,” Hailey replied quickly.
“I wish,” Grant shook his head.
Hailey twirled the box of matches in her fingers nervously. “If you’re telling me this story thinking that it will change the way I feel about you…if you are pulling out all the stops thinking that I will distance myself from you once I know the truth…that I will stop loving you…if this is some strange way of protecting me from…”
“I’ve never had a problem lying to anybody, Hailey,” Grant snapped, “but I don’t want to lie to you…I don’t want to keep secrets from you. I’m not telling you this so that you’ll distance yourself from me. I’m telling you this so that I can close the gap that is always going to be between us if I don’t come clean about what happened the night of the fire.”
Hailey squeezed Grant’s hand and nodded for him to continue.
“Like I said,” Grant began, “I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life. I’ve done a lot of things wrong, but I’m not that guy anymore. When I look in the mirror I don’t see the guy I used to be. I want to be different…you make me want to be different…better. I don’t want to lie to you. I’ve lied to a lot of people. My parents, I lied to them. My mother was easy; my father wanted to believe the lie because the truth was too difficult. My brother the cop, I lied to him. My sister the defense attorney extraordinaire, I lied to her. I perjured myself on the witness stand after swearing on the Bible to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth because I was ashamed of what I had done. But…I can’t lie to you…I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Grant,” Hailey shook her head, “I love you, and nothing you could say would change that because you’re right…you’re not that guy anymore.”
“And I never want to be again,” Grant said, tears sliding from his cheeks.
“Go ahead,” Hailey urged quietly, knowing this was something Grant had to get off his chest.
Grant took a deep breath. “I had a fight with my dad,” he began. “I was angry at him and angry at myself for letting him get to me. If he was going to be disappointed in me anyway, I wanted to give him a good reason to be disappointed. I didn’t plan to get caught; I didn’t need him to ever know what I had done. Just in my own mind, you know, I wanted to feel like I deserved to never be good enough.”
Grant glanced at Hailey. She was listening…not judging, just listening.
“It was a gas station in a really poor section of town, far from where I was playing my role in my mother’s dream of perfect suburbia, no matter how twisted that dream was,” Grant shrugged. “The short version is… I went around back behind the store. I threw a rock through a window and tossed a lit match inside, then one more. I sat back to see how long it would take the old man who ran the place to put the little fire out. Only, it didn’t go the way I had planned, which isn’t surprising considering that common sense and basic decency tend to be the first things to go when you try to numb your pain. The fire got bigger, and nothing seemed to be happening. Soon the whole backside of the store was up in flames.”
“Oh no,” Hailey swallowed, trying her best to put herself in Grant’s shoes, then and now.
“I should have expected it,” Grant shook his head as the emotion shone on his face. “It was just an old, small wood-framed store in a really poor part of town, but I was sure the old man would extinguish the blaze before it had time to destroy much. It sounds crazy now, I know, but it made sense to me then. I didn’t want to hurt anyone; I didn’t want to destroy the man’s business. I wasn’t heartless; I just wanted to be a guy who knew he deserved to live his life in the shadow of his dead brother because his life wasn’t worthy of garnishing any respect. Not that my actions ever had a legitimate defense, but knowing what I know now …” Grant swiped at his tears as Hailey reached to hold him. “Hailey, my parents didn’t deserve any of the heartache I so willingly heaped on them. My brother’s life didn’t deserve the jealous irreverence with which I treated it. Ike is dead because of me! Ike died in a fire, of all things, because our dad saved me.” Grant shook his head, his words weighing heavily on his heart. “I have always been too ashamed of what I did that night to tell my father the truth, but there is no way I could ever tell him now.”
“What happened to the store?” Hailey gulped.
“The flames were getting bigger, and I started to get scared. From behind the building, I glanced at the two gas pumps out front, and my heart raced. Where was the old man? Why hadn’t he put the fire out yet? The fire was spreading quickly. It had almost consumed the building by then, and the old man was still inside, so I did all that I had time to do. I had destroyed the old man’s store, his livelihood, and judging by the poor condition of the building and the clothes he had been wearing, I had destroyed all he had in the world. I swore to myself that I would make it up to him, that I would replace everything somehow and ensure he ended up with more than he had to start with when all was said and done, but, in order to do that, I couldn’t let him die. I may have been an irresponsible troublemaker who had just done the stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life, but it was never my intention for anybody to get hurt.” Grant’s voice remained steady despite the tears that dripped from his eyes. “That the old man could die as a result of my need to experiment with a side of life Ike had never known was not on my mind when I tossed the matches inside, but, running toward the entrance of the burning store, it was all I could think about. I was running as fast as I could, and, though I was the fastest guy I knew, I never thought I would get there fast enough. When I reached the door, the crackling of burning wood was louder than I would have ever imagined it to be. I rushed inside, the heat from the flames already stinging my face. There was so much smoke I couldn’t see anything, and, every now and then, I could hear the sound of exploding glass. I shouted for the old man as I tried to breathe into my shirt. Suddenly, just as one of the cooler doors exploded, I saw the old man on the floor with a fire extinguisher next to him. Hailey, he had tried to put the fire out…he had been trying to save his store…” Grant stopped. “Do you hate me yet?”
Hailey didn’t say anything, but her eyes urged Grant to continue.
“I knew if I didn’t hurry the old man and I would both be trapped inside,” Grant recalled. “I wanted my dad right then more than I had ever wanted him in my life. What scared me most was that he would find out what I had done, that I would be dead and unable to explain, and he would know that the son he believed was so incredibly intelligent was really just an underage intoxicated idiot who had started a fire next to a couple of gas pumps and gotten himself and someone else killed in the process.”
“Did the old man die, Grant?” Hailey asked, tears welling up, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
“He was coughing wildly, and it wasn’t until I drug him outside that I realized I was too. I fell next to him on the pavement. His face and his clothes were dirty with smoke, and his breaths were shallow. We were face-down out on the pavement… it was right then that my eyes met his for the very first time. I knew we had to move; I knew we were not out of harm’s way.” Grant was crying so hard now that Hailey had to struggle to make out his words. “I didn’t think that I had the strength to pull him to safety, but…somehow…”
“You saved him?” Hailey nodded.
“I don’t know that you can call it that,” Grant shook his head. “But, yeah, he survived.”
Hailey wrapped her arms around Grant and held him so tightly she wasn’t sure when or if she would ever let go. The story ended there; he didn’t need to say more.
Her arms still wrapped tightly around him, Hailey kissed Grant’s cheek. “You made some bad decisions, but you also made some good ones that go to the core of who you are,” she cried. “You did some things you’re not proud of, but look how far you have come, Grant…”
“I want a chance to live this life, Hailey,” Grant wept. “I want a chance to prove that I have changed. I remember Joey telling me once that growing up is a long and tedious process that comes to fruition in one gripping instance. She said that for her it happened in the form of a television news broadcast during the Gulf War. For me, I think that the time is now. I want to make all the lessons I have learned mean something. I want to live this new life…”
“I pray every second of every day that you get that chance,” Hailey cried.
