Dad stayed around for the funeral and the graveside service a few days later.

He was right there next to me and mom in the little country church when the minister, a skinny man known as Pastor Ed, gave the eulogy and later the send-off for Nana in the graveyard behind the church before her casket was lowered into the ground.

It seemed, in many ways, like old times. My old man and my mom and me together again. Of course, I knew this was a special time, a family event.

Unlike the old days, they didn’t sleep together back at the house. My old man spent his nights in Nana’s room. Something seemed different between my old man and mom. The years, perhaps Nana’s death, had changed things somehow.

Gone was the bickering, the accusations, even some of the tension that permeated that house when my old man was around.

“I know you never liked Nana,” mom said. “You didn’t have to stick around for all this.”

The three of us were on the porch, remarkably enough, recalling some of the old times with Nana: The strawberry shortcake she liked to bake, her feisty personality.

“I have to give that old bitch credit. She never took any shit from anyone,” my old man said.

“Please Frank. She was my mother. Don’t call her a bitch. But you’re right. She didn’t take crap from anyone, including you.”

My old man shot my mom an evil grin. “Well now, I’m not gonna deny that. The old girl had some piss and vinegar alright.”

It grew quiet. A robin sitting in a willow tree at the far end of the property flew from a branch toward the porch. It fluttered before us and swiveled, letting out a cawing noise before disappearing. Every year, robins built a bird nest on the porch beneath the spouting, and the robin was apparently checking on her young, letting us know we were intruders. Off in the distance, a faint rumble of thunder rocked the sky.

“Hank Stone’s store is for sale,” my old man said. He turned and looked at my mom.

“I could have told you that,” she said, staring off toward Miller’s Creek.

“Really?” I said. For this was truly news to me. Stone General Store was a landmark in the valley. Gasoline, groceries, a delicatessen, and of course, bait and tackle and those locally hand-tied flies.

“I’m making an offer.”

My mother laughed, as if choking, put a hand to her chest, glanced at my old man, before throwing back her head to surrender to an uncontrollable burst of giggling. I had never witnessed my mother laughing so hard, so uncontrollably. It was the one time I can remember my old man appearing something akin to embarrassment.

“What the hell’s so funny Marie?” he said.

“C’mon Frank. You don’t have two nickels to rub together.”

My old man glared at her. “Okay, he said. “You’re partly right. I don’t have a whole lot of money. A lot of what I earn I send to you, but I got enough for a small down payment and with a couple of partners, I could have that store by the fall. We’ll see who’s laughing when the deer hunters are flooding the store on their way back and forth to their camps and I’m happy taking their money.

“Oh, really now,” mom said, fighting a smile. “You’ve looked into this?”

My old man nodded.

“And you have partners?”

Her eyebrows raised, her head cocked, my mom waited for him to respond.

Lightning lit up the sky. Thunder followed. The storm was drawing closer.

“Well … there’s junior here, and you.”

My mom appeared stunned.

“My God Frank. Have you lost your mind?

“I don’t think so.”

“You have. You’ve lost your mind.”

“Dad. Really? You’re serious about this?”

My old man crossed his arms. He looked like a petulant child. “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.”

My mom shot up from the porch swing. “This is just too much,” she said. She threw open the porch screen door and disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’m not kidding about this Billy. That store … it’s a gold mine.”

It was a gold mine, the only store for miles around where people could fill their gas tanks and stock up on groceries, household supplies, and fishing equipment.

“It takes work to run a store dad.”

“Don’t you think I know that junior?”

“I think you know a lot of things dad … but sometimes …”

“What?”

“You’re kind of impulsive.”

“So … what? You don’t want to be a partner?”

“Jesus dad. I didn’t say that.”

“This is a chance.”

“A chance?”

“Our chance. Don’t you see. To be a family. All of us … in this together.”

I wanted to tell my old man a lot of things at that moment. How that ship had sailed. I wanted to ask him where he’d been twenty years ago, when a ten-year-old kid really needed him, and how he couldn’t just suddenly make things better through the years by taking his son fishing during the great mayfly hatches on Miller’s Creek.

“Your mother tells me you hate your job and hate Houston. Hell son … you could come home. Be a businessman.”

“Jesus dad. Jesus.”

A loud burst of thunder rocked the sky and the screen door whined open. My mom held a small brown book in her hands. In almost ceremonial fashion, with an erect bearing, she slowly walked to my old man sitting beside me on the porch, and with the book still in her hands, dropped it on his lap.

“What’s this?”

My old man looked at my mom as if she’d lost her mind.

“So.” He looked kind of helplessly over at me then back at mom. I recognized the book as Nana’s diary. No one, of course, was ever allowed to read Nana’s diary. Not even mom. I knew this couldn’t be good for my old man. I’m pretty sure he sensed this too as he sat there looking kind of stupidly at this musty old book with the dull brown cover sitting in his lap.

Mom snatched it up and cast furious eyes upon my old man.

“Do you want to tell me what this is all about?” he said.

It took my mom no time at all to thumb through the pages before she stopped and held the diary open. With a look that wavered between agony and triumph, she held it open before her with two hands.

“Do you want me to read it Frank? Or do you want to read it?”

For the longest time, they locked eyes, my mother with that expression of agonized triumph. It was clear she had caught him somehow. He looked confused but trapped as well.

The porch chimes tinkled from the wind. There came another burst of thunder and it began to rain.

“Maybe Billy should read it.” She thrust the diary toward me, holding it aloft.

“Why don’t you just stop this Goddamn nonsense Marie.”

“Nonsense huh? Nonsense?” My mother screamed above the rain now rain pounding the roof, the wooden planks at the edge of the porch, and the wooden railing in front of us, spraying us with droplets and mist.

“Why don’t we go inside?” my old man said. “I’m getting wet.”

My mother raised the diary, the rain pummeling all around us with a furious torrent. I had never witnessed my mother commit an act of violence. She had never even spanked me, but I thought she might slap my old man silly with that diary.

But she didn’t hit him with that diary, that book that held some secret. With a long back-handed swipe of her arm, the diary flew from her hand and into the rain down the hill. My old man gawked at my mother as if she’d gone mad. And perhaps, she had gone a bit mad.

The sky blinked with lightning. A crash of thunder, like massive boulders smashing, shook the earth. The diary sat there in the grass, a small brown square, collecting rain. No one made any attempt to retrieve it.

First my mother, then my old man, and finally I too left the porch and went into the house. It rained all afternoon and into the night.

The next morning, brilliant sunshine filtered through the windows of the small house, and a pungent, welcome aroma of bacon and eggs drifted to my room.

When I looked out the window of my boyhood bedroom, I could see the diary still there on the ground part way down the hill.

My mother was at the stove moving around eggs in a skillet when I came into the kitchen.

“Where’s dad?” I asked.

“He left. It must have been the middle of the night.” She turned around. “How do you want your eggs? Scrambled?”

“Sure.”

We ate in silence.

After breakfast, I packed my things and prepared to leave. I had an afternoon flight to catch out of the small airport in town thirty miles away.

“I wish you could stay longer,” she said.

We were driving along the two-lane road along Miller’s Creek. Cabins dotted the streambank along the way to the main highway.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve been thinking long and hard about that.”

The big sign of Stone General Store loomed above the pine trees along the road.

“Ha. Can you believe dad? Talking about buying that place.” Several pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot fronting the store. Two fishermen in waders and ballcaps crossed the lot toward a truck.

“It’s not the worst idea he ever came up with,” she said, glancing at the scene as she drove us past the store.

After checking in my two bags, we sat in the small airport lounge, waiting for the time of my departure. The conversation was mostly about my job and how things were going back in Texas.

“I just hope you’re happy,” she said. “Life is short you know. No sense doing what you don’t like.”

“I worked hard you know. I didn’t want to be like him.”

“You mean … like your father.”

“Who else?”

My mother looked out the big windows toward the runway where a small propeller plane was coming in for a landing.

All at once, she smiled. “No. You don’t want to be like your father.”

The announcement came for me to board my plane. Aside from a handful of other people, who began to rise from their seats and gather some belongings, I was the only other passenger taking this flight on the small commuter plane bound for Pittsburgh where I’d board another plane for Chicago and then on to Texas.

“So … what was in the diary?” I asked.

My mother sighed. She looked past me toward the boarding area. “Another time.” She brought me toward her in an embrace and kissed my cheek before gently pushing me away. “Go. You don’t want to miss your plane.”

From the short story, The Dying Light by Mike Reuther. His Amazon Author Page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Mike%20Reuther/e/B009M5GVUW/ref=la_B009M5GVUW_pg_2?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_82%3AB009M5GVUW&page=2&sort=author-pages-popularity-rank&ie=UTF8&qid=1512326113