Serious Moonlight(65)

It wasn’t until I got home that my mechanical heart stopped working, and I fell apart.

I couldn’t have said why exactly. I was just shaken up and sad. He was supposed to be sunshine. That was what I thought the night when I first met him in the diner. But underneath, he was rain and gray skies. The sober realization that he’d struggled and been in so much pain shattered me into a thousand pieces, over and over again, and I cried until I ran out of tears.

I’d lost my mother.

I’d lost my grandmother.

The possibility of losing someone else was overwhelming.

Maybe too overwhelming.

The realization of this made me feel as if I’d been shoved off my feet and all my emotions had toppled out during the fall. Now came the hard part: picking those pieces up and fitting them back where they belonged.





“That’s the thing about people. They always find ways to surprise you.”

—DCI John Luther, Luther (2010)





20




* * *



I couldn’t sleep that morning. Not really. It was hard for me to tell if it was worry-induced insomnia because I was still upset over Daniel’s revelation, or if my usual sleep issues were getting worse. Maybe both. But when I finally sat up in bed around noon, it was to the sound of a loud thump somewhere outside my bedroom door. Tracking down the source of the noise, I found Grandpa Hugo in the upstairs hallway, dragging an old suitcase out of a closet.

“What’s going on?” I asked, yawning.

He stood up on his walking cane and smiled at me. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Eh, I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. What are you doing with that old thing?”

“Packing for Yakima River Canyon. Cass’s sister bought a cabin near Ellensburg, and he invited me to come along for some fly-fishing.”

“Huh,” I said, surprised. “Fly-fishing?”

“Rainbow trout. You haven’t seen my rod, have you? The smaller one?”

“It’s in the attic. I’ll get it down for you. When are you leaving, and how long will you be gone?”

“Two weeks.”

“You’re leaving in two weeks?”

“Staying for two. Maybe less if the fish aren’t biting. I’m leaving in a couple of hours.”

“What?” I felt like I was hearing him wrong.

“I know it’s last-minute.” He scratched the back of his head as if he were uncomfortable, like he used to do when I was younger and he had no idea how to relate to me, a stranger who’d come to live in his house. “But Cass asked me a few days ago—that morning in the greenhouse when he came over. I told him no. You’d just started this job, and I didn’t want to feel like I was abandoning you. But you seem to be adjusting to your work schedule just fine, and I woke up this morning and decided, what the heck?”

“You’re leaving?” I repeated, still shaking off sleep.

“Do you not want me to go? I can call it off. It’s—”

“No. I mean, I’ll be fine. Of course you should go.”

“Are you sure? Eleanor always helped make these decisions.” His brow wrinkled. “Everything’s topsy-turvy these days.”

“I’m sure. When you were my age, you were joining the Coast Guard. I think I can manage a few days by myself.”

Probably. I’d never been left alone for that long. Grandma was always here when he went on trips with Cass, and Grandpa was always here when she went to visit her family upstate.

“It’s only a couple of hours from here,” he said, adjusting his suspenders, “so if you had an emergency, I could come right back. But Mona said she’d look in on you and make sure you were feeding yourself.”

He wouldn’t be so gung ho about depending on her as some kind of angelic caretaker if he’d known what we’d done at Sharkovsky’s house. But I didn’t say this.

“If it would make you feel more comfortable,” he said, “you can stay at Mona’s while I’m gone.”

Whoa. I used to fight both him and Grandma to be able to do that. It was weird for it to be such a casual offer now. “I’m eighteen, not a child, Grandpa.”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t leave if I thought you were, Birdie.”

“Who’s driving to Yakima?”

“Cass.”

Better a one-handed man than Grandpa behind the wheel. Long-distance drives and narcolepsy were a terrible pair.

“Are you okay with all this?” he asked. “Work is fine? And everything is okay with that friend of yours at work?”

“Daniel.”

“I remember,” he said with a wink. “Mona likes him. I wish you’d bring him home and let your kind grandpa meet him.”

“Maybe when you get back.” If he was still in the picture. My stomach knotted as pieces of our sushi-dinner conversation flitted through my head.

“Everything is okay,” Grandpa asked, “isn’t it?”

I handed him his walking cane and picked up the suitcase, heading into his bedroom. “What if someone confessed something to you, and it’s not necessarily bad. . . .” I struggled to dance around what Daniel had told me over sushi, trying to find the right words. “But it’s really heavy, and you’re having a hard time coming to terms with this revelation, but you’re not sure why.”