“She didn’t even see it. She left before the delivery was made. She hasn’t returned my calls. Long distance won’t work. She went back to take over Redmond Enterprises. She’s going to be busy. I’m busy. Taking over Redmond Enterprises is her dream. I’m not going to stand in the way of that. My family is here. I’m not moving to New York. It’s good that this happened now instead of later. Later would’ve been harder.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Wren asks.
“I’m—”
My phone chirps a text in my pocket, and I pull the thing out.
Nothing good comes from middle of the night communications.
Wren is calling after me because I’m running from the office a second later. My heart is racing, my palms sweating.
I don’t remember the drive, or parking, or rushing through the front. When I get to the information desk, I have to be asked more than once before I can remember why I’m even here.
“Imogene Rose Ward,” I tell the tired-looking woman.
She directs me to the floor, and then she has to do it a second time when I stare at her blankly because I couldn’t hear her voice over the pounding in my ears the first time around.
Time slows, the elevator taking a thousand years. The waiting room is already full. Mom is crying. Dad is visibly upset, but I can tell he’s trying to be strong. Tyler looks as destroyed as I feel. Uncle Eddie and his family are here, huddled together and weeping, and I know I’m too late. I stumble up to my mother, pulling her to my chest. Her tears dampen my shirt, and it surprises me that it’s the first sensation I notice, the second the warmth of my dad’s palm on my back.
“She’s gone,” I whisper, wondering where my own tears are.
I’m devastated, and I feel the pain of it, so where are the tears?
“No,” Mom says, pulling her head back, and hope blooms like a garden in my chest.
Then I see her stricken face.
“Not yet.”
“There’s nothing they can do,” Dad says, his voice husky and riddled with pain. “The damage from the heart attack was too extensive. She wouldn’t survive surgery.”
“You need to go and say goodbye.”
“I can’t,” I argue. “I won’t.”
If I don’t, then she’ll live. I know it in my soul. I don’t care how childlike it seems.
Mom cups my cheek. “Gaige, go.”
I nod, and she guides me to the desk lined with kind-looking nurses. No words are spoken as they lead me to one of the small rooms. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Lala in a hospital bed. She had a hip replacement several years ago, but she was lucid and smiling by the time we were able to see her. Now, she’s frail and tiny in the too-big bed, wires and cords attached to her body, machines beeping all around her. At first, they give me a tiny jolt of hope. Why have them if they aren’t going to help?
But my mother and father wouldn’t lie to me. If there was hope to be had, they would be the first to try and build that in Tyler and me. They’ve always been like that with us growing up. Sometimes it worked in our favor, sometimes it didn’t. It was healthy either way.
If they say there is none, it’s because there isn’t.
The tears I couldn’t find in the waiting room find me as I sit in the single chair beside the bed. Her hand is cooler than it should be, and I clasp it between mine to warm it. She doesn’t move, doesn’t smile the way she always does when I’m near her, and the tears fall harder. It isn’t lost on me that it’s technically the day after her ninetieth birthday. This time of year is always going to be so bittersweet for the family going forward.
I’m grateful for speaking with her so recently, and it’s the recollection of that last conversation that makes the sob bubble from my throat. I made promises to her, ones I wanted to keep then, ones I know I have to keep now.
And yet, I gave up on Leighton so easily.
Hell, just before getting the text from Tyler, I gave Wren a long list of reasons why we could never work out. I’ll be damned if all of those reasons will stop me. I hate the big city, but if living in New York is what she wants, I’ll gladly go there for her. I can deal with smog and noise so long as I can breathe in her scent and listen to her say my name.
“I think I can convince her to marry in St. Louis,” I whisper, my lips closer to her weathered hand. “Early fall when the leaves are just starting to turn so we have the best of both worlds, the greens and reds, you know? Leighton is going to be absolutely stunning. I’ll cry when I first see her. I just know I will. I’m going to hate the slow beat of the wedding march. I’ll want to speed it up. I’ll want her to be mine quicker, but you already know how impatient I am.”