The Sweetheart Secret by Shirley Jump

hair had gone gray, nearly white, and his blue eyes had softened to a pale sky.
    Grandpa Earl, once a man who Colt had thought could beat anything, conquer any obstacle, was sick. Early onset Parkinson’s, coupled with the gradual wear down of congestive heart failure, had eroded the hearty Earl Harper, a little more every day. Something Grandpa had refused to accept. Hell, even Colt was having trouble with the concept, and he was the one who had made the initial diagnosis.
    Colt sighed. “Grandpa, you need to at least see a specialist. I’m a general practitioner. Not an expert in Parkinson’s or heart disease.”
    â€œI don’t need an expert. I know what’s wrong with me.” Earl scowled. “So leave me be, will you?”
    â€œAt least get out of the house once in a while.” Colt loosened his tie, tucked his glasses in his pocket. “Go back to the card games at Golden Years. Nick said his grandpa was asking about you.”
    â€œThat rat bastard. The day I play cards with him is the day I roll over and die. And don’t start asking me why. I don’t need to talk about it or get my feelings on the table or any such Dr. Phil foolishness. What I need is to be left the hell alone.” Grandpa Earl tossed the phone onto the counter, then crossed to the living room and returned to his seat in the ugly La-Z-Boy recliner that sat in direct line with the television screen. With a grunted exclamation point, Grandpa pulled the lever and flipped out the footrest. The brown leather chair had seen better days—hell, better decades—and sported duct tape bandages on all major appendages. Grandpa’s La-Z-Boy had been in Earl’s house on Bayberry Lane for as long as Colt could remember. When Colt insisted his grandfather give up the old, rundown house and move into Colt’s bungalow, the chair had been the one non-negotiable on Grandpa’s list.
    As much as he hated that hideous chair, Colt had agreed. Grandpa Earl needed to be in a safer environment, one where Colt could be sure that his elderly grandfather was getting the care he needed. Care that involved making sure he took his medications every day, and ate three squares. Colt had thought it would be easy.
    He’d been wrong. Grandpa Earl had never been one for convention, and apparently not one for following doctor’s orders—especially when that doctor was his grandson. Hence the coffee shrapnel. Right beside the dent in the wall from yesterday’s soup bowl. And the triangular hole made by Colt’s iPad the day before.
    When Colt had been a kid, Grandpa Earl had been the closest thing to a parental role model in Colt’s life. Grandpa had taken Colt and his brother fishing, taught the boys how to tie a gossamer thin line into a lure, how to reel in a silvery-green bass before it slipped the hook, and how to have patience as the sun marched lazily across the sky and the fish hovered beneath the lake’s placid surface. His grandfather had served two decades in the military, then worked forty-five years under a hood, fixing anything with an engine, until he was forced to retire when he lost his grip on his tools and his patience.
    Then Grandma Nancy had died a little over a year ago, and the busy, brimming life that Grandpa Earl had once had ground to a halt, except for the weekly card games with Walt Patterson, which came to an abrupt end earlier in the year. From that day forward, Grandpa Earl had fully withdrawn into a hermit-like life, ignoring medical advice and doctor recommendations. As his illness progressed and loneliness took over the four-bedroom house where he and Nancy had raised their sons, the once vital, energetic grandfather Colt had known slipped away.
    There were days when Colt would do anything to get those moments back. To have one last fishing trip, one last memory on the banks of the Whistler’s Lake. One last day of wisdom and laughter, the kind of days Colt