by Ali Standish
“We went to check on you, and you were gone, and the truck was gone, and—”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m okay.”
When Mom and Dad finally let me go, Roddie steps out of the truck behind me, and Grandpa Ike shuffles around.
“You two!” Mom cries. “You found him! You saved him!”
And before either of them can respond, Dad is hugging Roddie and Mom has flung her arms around Grandpa Ike. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Mom says, peppering his cheeks, which have gone bright red, with kisses.
Then she does the same thing to Roddie while Dad goes to shake Grandpa Ike’s hand.
“Ugh, Mom, get off!” Roddie says. “You’re all muddy.”
But there’s a big grin on his face.
When we get inside, the house is dark except for the glow of a camping lantern. But other than the power being out and some branches and loose shingles in the driveway, there doesn’t seem to be any damage. Mom gives me a flashlight and sends me upstairs to change my clothes. I only make it up a few steps before she and Dad follow me.
“We need to change too,” she says. But I know they want to stay close to me.
Five minutes later, Mom, Dad, Roddie, and Grandpa Ike sit in the living room as I tell them what happened. Mom lets out a little squeal when I get to the part about crossing the bridge, and Grandpa Ike says “Thatta boy” when I tell them about saving Coralee. I tell them everything, except for the part where Kacey helped me over the bridge. I don’t think they’d understand that part.
When I finish, no one says anything. Not even about the truck.
“That was a very brave thing you did, kid,” Grandpa Ike says, stroking his beard.
“But also very foolish,” Mom adds. “Why didn’t you tell us you knew where Coralee was? We would have helped.”
“I didn’t want anyone else to be in danger.”
“Next time, do us a favor and put us in danger, okay, bonehead?” Roddie says, ruffling my hair.
It’s true that I wanted to keep everyone safe.
But I think maybe I went alone because I had to save Coralee. On my own. The way I couldn’t save Kacey.
Dad shakes his head. “This wouldn’t have happened if Coralee hadn’t—”
“She risked her life to save those pups,” I interrupt, feeling a defensive prickle run up my spine. “She went to save them because she knew no one else would care enough to do it. She’s a hero. And she’s my best friend. Just like Kacey is.”
Dad’s mouth is hanging open, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“So,” Roddie says finally. “Can I play with the wolf pups, or what?”
Moving On
THE POWER DOESN’T COME back on that afternoon, or that night, either. Fortunately, Mom put a gallon of milk in a cooler of ice this morning, and she and I use Mack’s eyedropper to feed it to the pups, who drink down so much, I’m worried their stomachs will explode. I wonder how long it’s been since they’ve eaten.
Mom makes everyone peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, and we all eat them without complaint, even Grandpa Ike. I realize that I, too, am ravenous, and when I finish my first sandwich, I ask Mom for another.
“Of course,” she says happily, jumping up from her chair.
She’s been kind of hyper ever since we got home, following me from room to room and talking a lot about nothing in particular. I think she’s worried that the strain of the past twenty-four hours is going to cause me to have a breakdown.
And that night, when the house is quiet and everyone else is asleep, I wonder the same thing. My thoughts keep drifting to Kacey in the nursing home. How much longer does she have before she goes? Will she be scared? Will she even know when it happens? Will I?
More than anything, I wish I could be there with her. But I know that’s impossible. I know Mr. Reid still blames me. I know he won’t let me see her.
When I wake up the next morning, my eyes dart straight to the pups where I settled them last night, in a box with some towels laid inside. They’re curled up in a knot of soft tawny fur, their little black noses almost touching. It’s like they know their mother is gone and that they will have to support each other now. One of them gives a small sigh, and the other extends its tiny pink tongue to lick its sibling’s nose.
Seeing them snuggled together in the box reminds me of the way Coralee and I curled up together during the storm. But it also reminds me of how Kacey and I used to fall asleep in the back of the car on the way home from the pool when we were little, and how we used to sit close together when we watched horror movies in her basement.
There’s a knock on my door.
“Can I come in?” says a sheepish voice. Roddie.
“Okay,” I reply, sitting up and shifting over on the bed so he can sit next to me.
The bed frame squeaks as he sits down. He puffs up his cheeks and lets out a long sigh. I run my fingers over my hair.
“No school today,” he says. “Too much debris in the road.”
“Cool.”
There’s a long pause.
“Look, I’m really sorry,” he says finally. “For what I said to you back in Boston.”
“You don’t need to—”
“At least I can explain. When I said those things to you, about Kacey being as good as dead, I was trying to help. I know it sounds weird, but I thought that maybe if I could get you to just face what had happened, then you might start to get over it. You weren’t eating or sleeping. All you did was watch her window and talk about her. I thought the longer you went on like that, the worse you would take it when she really did, you know, die.”
“And you also wanted me to get a grip so we wouldn’t have to move.”
Roddie’s cheeks go pink. “Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t want to have to move.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t speak to me for so long. You hated me because I’m the reason we had to leave Boston.”
He shakes his head, his eyes widening. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong! I never hated you. If anything, I thought you probably hated me for the things I said to you. And I wouldn’t blame you. I’ve been mad at a lot of people, Ethan. Mom and Dad and even you. But trust me. I’ve been angrier at myself than anyone. When Mom came down and said you had gone out into the storm, I thought—what if you never came back, and I never apologized for the things I said? What if I never told you how much I love you?”
“I love you too,” I murmur. “I’m sorry you had to leave everything behind. Back in Boston, I just—I wasn’t ready to move on yet. I couldn’t.”
“And maybe you still haven’t,” says Roddie. “And that’s okay, I guess, as long as you get over it sometime. Otherwise you’re going to end up like Grandpa Ike.”
“Grandpa Ike?”
“I mean look at the guy. Grandma dies, and he gets so angry at the world that he shuts everyone else out, even his own family. It’s been over thirty years, and he still spends all his time alone. You don’t want to end up like that, do you?”
“No,” says a voice in the doorway. “You don’t.”
Roddie and I look up in time to see Grandpa Ike disappear down the hall.
We stare at each other.
“I’ll go after him,” I say.
Roddie nods.
“And Roddie?” I add.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry that you and Grace broke up.”
“What?” Roddie says, brows furrowing.
“I heard you guys talking yesterday, about how it was for the best.”
“Oh,” Roddie says. “We weren’t talking about us, Ethan. We were talking about Kacey. How it’s better for her not to be trapped in that hospital bed. She can be free now.”
The Shrine
I TRUDGE DOWN THE hall after Grandpa Ike.
Then I come to a sudden stop. Because his door is standing wide open, and he’s sitting in a wicker rocking chair inside, like he’s waiting for me.
Is Grandpa Ike really goin
g to let me into his room?
“Well, don’t just stand there,” he calls.
I step through the doorframe.
Besides the rocking chair, the only pieces of furniture in the room are a quilted bed with a single pillow and a dresser that looks like Grandpa Ike might have made himself.
The dresser is covered with photos.
The walls are covered with photos.
Grandpa Ike clears his throat, and my gaze snaps back to him.
“I’m, um, I’m sorry,” I say. “Roddie didn’t mean—”
“Roddie’s right,” Grandpa Ike barks.
Neither of us says anything for a minute while I walk around, looking at the pictures. They are all of Grandma Betty. Pictures of their wedding, pictures of Grandma Betty dancing, even a painted portrait.
There’s a little girl in a few of the photos, who must be Mom. Grandma Betty holding her as a baby in the hospital, Mom with Grandma Betty and Grandpa Ike building a sand castle on the beach, Mom dressed in some kind of animal costume, beaming from under Grandma Betty’s arm. But there don’t seem to be any photos after one of Mom blowing out the candles at her tenth birthday party. No middle school dances or high school sports teams or college graduations.
There’s also not a speck of dust anywhere.
“So now you know why I don’t want anyone in here messing around,” he said.
“It’s like a—like a shrine.”
Grandpa Ike shrugs. “I guess you could call it that.”
There’s an empty spot on the wardrobe between a photo of Grandma Betty on a carousel and one of her with a black-and-white-spotted dog licking her face.
“You put one of your photos in my room,” I said. “Before I came. The one of her on the bike.”
“It’s one of my favorites.”
Grandpa Ike springs up suddenly, like a much younger man. “There’s something else,” he says. “Something I want you to see. Let’s go for a drive.”
“But your truck,” I say. “I ruined it.”
“We’ll take Roddie’s.” His face gives no clues if he’s angry or not.
“I’m really sorry—about your truck, I mean.”
He swipes a hand in front of his face like a bear swatting at a fly. “There are some things we lose, and it’s a tragedy,” he says. “Then there are other things. Things we probably should have gotten rid of a long time ago.”
There’s burned bacon downstairs in the kitchen, which must mean the power is back on, and bright rays of sunlight stream through the windows. It’s almost like there never was any storm.
Almost.
Grandpa Ike waits while Mom and Dad watch me eat a few strips of bacon.
“The kid and I are going to take a drive,” Grandpa Ike says to Mom. “If it’s all right with you, that is.”
Mom looks at me and back at Grandpa Ike. “I think that will be fine,” she says.
I almost choke on my bacon. It might be the first time I’ve heard them agree on anything since we’ve been here.
“Can he drop me off at Coralee’s afterward?” I say hesitantly, unsure of whether whatever strange power that has swayed Mom to agree with Grandpa Ike will also convince her to grant my request. “I need to make sure she’s okay,” I add, just for good measure.
Dad raises an eyebrow, but Mom nods. “All right, but Ike will wait for you outside. And you do not set foot in the driver’s seat of that truck, Ethan, or—”
Just then, the phone begins to ring.
Mom answers. She listens for a minute and chews on her lip. “Of course,” she says. But her voice sounds uncertain. “Of course. Let me just see.”
Then she puts her hand over the receiver.
“Ethan? It’s Mr. Reid. He’d like to speak to you.”
The Never Letting Go
AN HOUR LATER, GRANDPA Ike and I are in Roddie’s pickup truck with the pups riding in their box on the seat between us.
I have to bring them to Coralee’s, since as soon as I get home from visiting her, we’ll be leaving Palm Knot.
Grandpa Ike drives in silence down roads I don’t recognize, finally slowing and turning onto a driveway with huge wrought iron gates standing ajar.
Behind the gates, oaks drape over either side of the road and a brick wall runs alongside it.
He stops the truck and points to a fallen tree branch up ahead. “We’ll have to walk,” he says. “It’s not far.”
I lift the box out of the truck, where the pups will get too hot, and tuck it into a shady corner that Grandpa Ike says will be safe.
Then we walk beneath the shade of the trees, and with each step I take I become more confused. “Where are we?” I say.
“A place I spend a lot of time,” he replies.
We climb over the tree branch, and on the other side I see a gate in the brick wall.
Next to the gate is a sign:
OLD PALM CEMETERY
“Oh,” I say aloud. “Oh!”
Grandpa Ike leads me through the gate, and we weave between rows of headstones and angel statues until we come to a stop under a magnolia tree.
I read the headstone in front of us.
Betty Pomeroy, 1943–1983. Beloved mother and wife. Without you, all the light is gone.
Before I can stop it, a tear sneaks from the corner of my eye down my cheek, and I brush it away.
“Did you do all this?” I ask, pointing to the ground in front of my grandmother’s headstone, which is covered in a bed of flowers. They’re kind of bedraggled from the storm, but you can tell they were well taken care of before that.
“Yep.”
I think about the dead and shriveling plants that were growing in Grandpa Ike’s yard when we first arrived there. It’s hard to believe the same man who let that garden die a slow, brown death would have been cultivating this one the whole time.
“So this is where you come every day? When you aren’t at home?”
“Yep.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“You asked me once,” he says, “about why your mother and I don’t get along. And the answer is complicated, so we better sit down.” He gestures to a stone bench behind us.
“Your grandmother was the most beautiful person I ever met, inside and out. I’m not sure why she chose to marry me, to tell you the God’s honest truth. And it—it broke me when she died.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, not knowing what else to say.
“It’ll be thirty-four years next week,” he muses. He looks lost in his own world. “Every year, Mack puts together a big wreath of white lilies for me to give to her on the anniversary. Those were her favorite flowers.”
“So that’s what you ordered from Mack!”
He cracks a small smile. “Like clockwork. Every year.”
I stare at the letters carved into the tombstone. “Grandma Betty died of cancer, right?”
“That’s right. Breast cancer. It was horrible. Months she lay in that bed before she was taken.”
“That’s awful,” I say.
“When she died, she took the best part of me with her. There was your mama, just a kid, and me trying to outrun my pain, or trying to drink it away or fight it off. I’d leave for days at a time, not knowing where I was going, just knowing I needed to get away. I’d get picked up for bar fights and spend the night in the jail of a town I’d never even heard of before. If your mama was lucky, I’d remember to call to let her know where I was.”
“So you just left Mom at home, by herself?”
“When Betty disappeared from your mama’s life, I did too. I didn’t want to feel anything for anybody anymore, because if I did—”
“You might lose them.”
“That’s right,” Grandpa Ike says, running a hand over his silver beard. “And when I said I didn’t want you here, what I meant was that I didn’t like that I suddenly had people I cared about again, people I could lose. And I didn’t like having your mama here to remind me that I did wrong. I remind myself of that every day. I
know Betty would be ashamed of me.”
His voice sounds foggy, and when I look at him, I see tears trailing down his cheeks. He takes off his hat and uses it to swipe them away.
I want to kick myself for being so thick. I had thought Grandpa Ike was just a grumpy old man when really, he was sad. Just like me. And I hadn’t even seen it.
He puts his battered red hat back on his head, and for the first time, I look at it and realize the faded stitching on it is the Red Sox logo.
Even though Grandpa Ike has never been to Boston.
I guess everyone has their own way of loving their family.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “My point is that Roddie’s right. You don’t want to end up like me, hanging on to all your pain, your guilt.”
“But it’s different,” I say, tapping my foot impatiently against the grass. “Grandma Betty died of cancer. It wasn’t your fault. Kacey climbed that tree because I dared her.”
“Just like I was the one who taught you to drive.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“When we realized you had taken the truck, my first thought was that if anything happened to you, it would be my fault.”
“But that’s not—”
“I’m the reason you were out there in that storm. If you hadn’t known how to drive, you never would have been able to go on your own. You have no idea how relieved I was when you turned up safe and sound. Your mama would have never forgiven me if anything had happened to you, and I would never have forgiven me either.”
“But I was the one who decided to go,” I say. “Not you.”
“Just like your friend Kacey decided to go up in that tree. Nobody forced her.”
We sit in silence for a minute, both of us staring at the flower bed above Grandma Betty’s grave. Then Grandpa Ike kneels down and kneads at the dirt around the plants that have been knocked sideways by the storm, trying to straighten them again. I kneel next to him and do as he does. Bumblebees waft in and out of the crooked blooms, which bob their heads at us in thanks when we right them.
“We never know where life is going to lead, Ethan. What so many small decisions are going to add up to.”