1.
She always knew her grandfather would die – he was
eighty-two after all – but to say she was surprised to find his lifeless body
crumpled to the floor of his office would be a drastic understatement.
The
door closed behind her but she couldn’t hear it. The sight before her had been a part of her
worst nightmares, but now that she was confronted with the scene, she simply
couldn’t see it. It was like a staged photograph, a museum
installation she was on the outside of looking into. The connection she normally had with the old
man had yet to be made; logically, she knew that she should at the very least
be crying, but it was as though her brain was paralyzed which caused her whole
body to be incapable of anything, even breathing.
Of
course, after the initial shock, Seraphina Hanson ran over to her grandfather
and tried to see if he was breathing, if there was a chance that this actually
was a nightmare she had fallen into and not her current reality. The tears started to fall now, almost in
waves cascading down her cheeks. Even
so, as she spoke to the 911 operator, she managed to keep her voice
surprisingly steady.
While
she waited, her eyes flitted around the room.
Seraphina did not think he changed anything since he first acquired his
ownership of the Newport Beach Seagulls the year she was born, save for the
fact that the team photos that filled the wall behind his desk changed with
each passing year. His red oak desk had
scattered papers and financial books flipped open and strewn about, completely
disorganized unlike the man who occupied the office. His computer – which he always complained
about and rarely if ever transferred records from his books due to his disdain
for the technology – was off, looking untouched as it usually was. The framed photograph of Seraphina and her
older sister Katella that normally rested on the left corner of the desk was on
the floor, just out of reach of her grandfather’s body, cracks diluting the
smiling faces. The day’s newspaper was
close to where she was sitting, crumpled, carelessly open to an article about
her grandfather contemplating selling the Gulls in order to retire. She couldn’t read it.
Her
mind desperately needed something to focus on now that the first round of tears
were subsiding and the sporadic hiccups that typically followed such an
eruption began, and yet the options she had before her were too slippery for
her mind to grasp. Probably she should
get up and leave the room, waiting for the police just outside the room – crime
scene now, she suspected. Due to her
weekly “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” marathon, she knew she shouldn’t
have entered the room at all. Crime
scene now. Her grandfather was healthy
for his age, and from the apparent struggle that had taken place –
But
she didn’t want to think about that.
Most
likely, she contaminated the office, maybe even his body, but she had to make
sure that he was really –
No. She didn’t want to say the word. And she didn’t want to get up. Not just yet.
She knew that once they got here, they would take his body to determine
cause of death and then he would really be gone. And she didn’t want him to be gone just yet.
Seraphina
and her sister Katella had always been close to her grandfather. Ever since their parents die in a car
accident, Ken Brown and his wife Jane took the girls in and raised them. Jane died the October of Seraphina’s senior
year of high school from a stroke, but even with all this tragedy surrounding
the family, Ken was always the sturdy oak tree, the sap that held the family of
now only three together. Every once in a
while, Ken’s two sons, Alan and Ryan would visit, but they wouldn’t stay long,
and afterwards, Ken would always be in one of his rare snippy moods. He never would tell his granddaughters as to
why but Seraphina guessed he didn’t want to taint their optimistic views
regarding their uncles. It didn’t matter
though because eventually, both Katella and Seraphina realized what losers
their uncles were which only strengthened their affection for Ken. To both girls, he was their hero in different
ways. While Katella admired his silent
strength, always preparing, planning and yet maintaining an optimistic view on
life and reveling in the spontaneous (mostly), Seraphina admired his
resilience; having gone through the Depression, he literally came from nothing,
worked hard, saved up, and now was a quiet multi-millionaire living in Newport
Beach, living out one of his many dreams of owning a national hockey team.
Was,
of course, being the key word.
Her
eyes rolled down. Before, she couldn’t
see him. Now, he was all she could
see. His short, grey hair usually
covered by a navy blue sailor’s cap he wore ever since Seraphina could remember
– now somewhere on the floor, a few feet away from her left leg – his
cauliflower blue eyes that would never again look at her and shine the way they
used to. His false teeth that he would
always pop out to surprise the girls when they were younger would never present
themselves in a smile. Quickly, her mind
gathered everything she knew about him and stored those memories at the
forefront of her mind; the way he smelled like aftershave and musk, the way he
would throw his head back and let out an obnoxious, guttural laugh when he
found something truly funny – a trait she inherited from him – the way he would
stick out his tongue at her when they used to go to church, before Jane died,
even though the surrounding people could see.
The way his arms always made her feel safe, and the way, no matter what,
she felt everything would be okay no matter what she was going through – death,
a breakup, a poor grade, girl problems, puberty – everything would be okay
because he would take her hand, look her in the eyes, and tell her so. And she would believe him without question.
She
was afraid she would forget him. Forget
the coolness of his skin. The
protectiveness of his touch. The way he
laughed. The sound of his voice. The way he looked. The way he smiled. The way he smelled.
He
was the only constant in her life, besides Katella of course, and now he was
gone. Taken from her by someone.
She
didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
Her
mind raced back to their last conversation.
She needed to make sure there was nothing left unsaid between them,
something she might have misspoken about that could have offended or
disappointed him. After a few minutes,
she realized that no; in fact, they had spoken only a couple of hours ago. He wanted her to meet him here at seven that
evening because he needed to talk to her about something, something regarding
the team. He would never mention what
troubled him when it came to work.
Instead, if anything, he asked her to his office once the working day
had concluded and told her his dilemma.
For whatever reason, he held Seraphina’s opinion in high esteem, even
when it came to something as foreign to her as hockey. She had a feeling he needed to hear her point
of view concerning the situation, whatever the situation might be. Of course he would never tell her his
decision until after he disclosed it to the people involved, but after their
talk, he would usually take her out for ice cream and then they would talk
about everything but business - what Seraphina planned to do now that she was a
college graduate, how Katella’s event coordination business was doing, and was
Matt ever going to ask Katella to marry him?
Ken
had wanted to confirm that Seraphina was going to come in that evening. The conversation was no more than two
minutes. Ken had called her his Baby
Doll, his term of endearment for her, and they both said “I love you” before
hanging up. There was nothing special about
it.
For
a moment, Seraphina’s mind wondered if whatever her grandfather wanted to
discuss with her led to his… Maybe she
needed to fantasize in order to grapple with her current predicament, and yet
the evidence, the scene before her that she was now in, had shown an obvious
struggle. And a victim was produced in
the form of her grandfather.
Someone
had killed him, but for the life of her, Seraphina had no idea as to who would
do such a vicious act to another human being, and why they would do it to her
grandfather. He was eighty-two; sure, he
was strong, and if anyone threatened his granddaughters, Seraphina knew Ken
wouldn’t hesitate to protect them. But
courage did not equal strength, and while Ken could defend himself if a match
between him and somebody else was relatively even, it was highly unlikely that
he had a chance against his attacker if this person was a fraction faster or
stronger or younger.
Ken
wasn’t a bad, mean person. He didn’t go
out of his way to make someone miserable.
Yes, he had to make difficult decisions regarding his hockey team, the
players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers and anyone else involved with
the Gulls, but he was always direct, discreet, and fair. If he had to trade someone, he would explain
why, but he would never trade someone without warning. He always gave people a chance to redeem
themselves before making that final decision, because once that decision was
made, he wouldn’t change his mind, even if it turned out that that particular
decision was wrong. He negotiated
salaries not just on performance, but on a person’s demeanor and if they were a
team player both on and off the ice.
Rarely if ever did he talk to the press personally; he let head coach
and his close friend Henry Wayne take care of that for him. The only people that really knew what he was
thinking about were Seraphina and Katella, the former more so than the latter
only because Katella ran her own business and had to focus more on that than a
hockey team. People seemed to like him,
respect him, whether they agreed with him or not. Which caused Seraphina to shake her head in
confusion: who would do such a thing to her grandfather? What could he have possibly done to warrant
such a death?
From
her position in the room, she wasn’t quite sure how he died. For whatever reason, her mind had already
concluded that he had been murdered rather than simply killed or dead from
something internal like a heart attack.
But there seemed to be bruises forming around his neck and Seraphina
could feel a lump forming on the back of his head. Her rational mind wanted to figure out just
what happened, the sequence of events, the suspects. It couldn’t stop thinking
even if it wanted to.
But
the pain wouldn’t allow the mind to work just yet. All Seraphina could do in that moment was to
hold her grandfather as tightly as she possibly could, his head resting softly
in her lap, and try to memorize everything about him. Her heart constricted painfully, and before
she could stop herself, she started talking to his body as though he was
sleeping instead of gone. She talked
about her day and how much she loved him and how he was her hero and would
always be her hero and how she never properly thanked him for taking her and
Katella in after their parents died and for sending her to college and for
being there when she needed it. She
apologized for not attending more hockey games and for dating Billy Stanford
and for getting her first and only D in science class her sophomore year of
high school.
She
wasn’t sure how long she sat there mumbling incoherent sentence fragments or
when she started to cry again, but EMTs and police officers arrived soon
after. She didn’t remember having anyone
pry his body away from her. She didn’t
remember someone helping her up and leading her out of the office. But she remembered watching the EMTs place
her grandfather’s body on a stretcher and wheel him to the elevators just down
the hall. She knew she would never see
him again.
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