Read Lost Cause for Free Online

package trip to the Costa Brava with three friends from work. “Two weeks of sun, sand, drink and parties.” She smelled strongly of cheap perfume.
    â€œYou going to look for a young lady?” she said, winking and prodding me knowingly in the ribs as the plane swooped toward the runway.
    â€œI’m going to find my grandfather,” I replied.
    She seemed disappointed. “Oh. He lives down there then?”
    â€œHe’s dead,” I said, “but I think he fought in a war here a long time ago.”
    Elsie gave me a long look. “Young fella like you shouldn’t be bothering about boring old history. It’s the present that matters, not the past.” She turned to her friend in the seat next to her. “Hey, Edna, this young fella doesn’t know how to have a holiday. What d’you say we take him with us and show him a good time?”
    Edna was younger than Elsie, but beneath a thick layer of makeup, it was hard to tell by how much. “Come with us, son,” Edna said with a terrifying leer. “I’ll look after you.”
    I must have looked nervous, because Elsie laughed and said, “Don’t worry, lad. I won’t let Edna get her talons into you. But don’t be so serious. Make sure you leave some time for fun.”
    â€œI will,” I said as the wheels touched down at the end of the runway. I said it confidently, but I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life, arriving alone in a foreign city with only an address that I knew nothing about. What if the person at the address wasn’t interested in helping me? What would I do for the next two weeks? If I thought about it rationally, I knew I would be fine. I had the bank card and some cash, a guidebook and a few basic phrases of Spanish. I would get by, but I felt horribly lonely. And my task made me nervous. I was good at solving problems, specific problems with a concrete answer I could work toward. The problem Grandfather had set me hadn’t been clear. What was I supposed to find out? A part of me wished I was going on a mindless, no-stress holiday on the beach.
    â€œCome on,” Elsie said to Edna as she stood and rummaged in the overhead bin for her carry-on luggage. “We’re wasting beach time.” She looked back at me as the brightly dressed, cheerfully babbling tourists filed down the plane’s aisle. “If you get bored with the history stuff, we’re at the Hotel Miramar in Lloret de Mar. You find yourself a nice young lady and come and visit us. I hear the disco there plays lots of that hip-hop music you youngsters like.”
    â€œI’ll try.” I smiled back weakly and grabbed my carry-on bag.

    By the time I had collected my backpack, lined up interminably to be examined by Spanish customs and immigration, and fought my way through the crowds of arriving tourists to the front of the terminal building, I was exhausted even though it was still not quite seven in the morning.
    As far as I could see in either direction, the sidewalk was a seething mass of sweating people hauling huge suitcases that must have contained enough clothes for three months, jostling into vast snakelike lines for cabs that were arriving one or two at a time, or shouting at hotel buses that sailed past with full loads. The prospect of spending most of my morning here wasn’t thrilling, and my guidebook said that if I walked out of the airport to the main road, there were buses that ran regularly to downtown Barcelona. I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders and set off.
    As soon as I left the airport and the crowds, I felt better. The surrounding countryside was flat, treeless and crisscrossed by highways and dotted with industrial buildings, but the roads were quiet and the air pleasantly warm even though the sun was only just up. It felt good to be on my own and in charge, even if I was only catching a bus.
    At the bus stop, I flipped open my cell phone. I had a