Coming Home(142)

She gestured to his chair. “Sit, please.”

Danny slid the fork back onto the platter before he walked back to his chair and sat down, shifting it so that he was facing her fully. He had only seen her look this way a handful of times, but they were all associated with bad memories.

It wasn’t anger or sadness that filled her eyes. Instead, it looked more like resignation. Or resolution.

Or both.

She smiled gently as she turned to face him.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and…it’s time,” she said.

“Time for what?”

Gram reached across the table and laid her open hand in front of Danny; instinctively, he brought his hand up from his lap and took it in his own.

She gave it a gentle squeeze before she said, “It’s time to let Bryan go.”

Her words had the effect of a battering ram to his stomach; first the stealing of his breath, followed by the immediate onset of panic, and then finally the staggering pain.

They were so unanticipated that Danny couldn’t even open his mouth to attempt a response. In some twisted way, there had always been comfort in the fact that Gram hadn’t given up. Danny knew Bryan wasn’t coming back, but the fact that she still believed…it made it seem like perhaps—in some far-off, remote world—there was the tiniest possibility it could happen.

He didn’t want her to give up. He needed her to believe, even when he couldn’t.

“It’s been long enough, Daniel. He’s tired. I know he’s so tired.”

Danny’s stomach was churning, and he swallowed repeatedly, trying to keep his dinner down.

No. Don’t give up on him.

“There’s a thin line between being hopeful and being selfish, and I think I crossed it a long time ago. I just hope he’ll forgive me for making him stay so long.”

“Gram,” Danny choked out, but his voice sounded strange, like it was coming from some place far away and not his own mouth. “Doctors aren’t always right. Maybe—”

She shook her head. “I know my Bryan. He would have come back to us if he could have. He would have fought and fought and fought. But he’s tired, love. It’s time for him to rest.”

Danny removed his hand from hers and ran it up through his hair before shaking his head. “We don’t have to decide this now.”

“Yes, we do,” she said softly.

“Why?” Danny snapped, slamming his hand down on the table.

Gram didn’t even flinch. Instead, her shoulders softened as her eyes met his. “Because I want you to be able to say your good-byes…before you go.”

The chair screeched abruptly as he stood from the table and walked through the kitchen. With a quick jerk of his arm, he swiped his keys off the half wall and strode out the front door, slamming it closed behind him.



Danny sat in the back seat of Leah’s car, staring at the buildings as they blurred past the window. Every so often he’d glance at the rearview mirror, watching the reflection of her eyes until they flicked up and found his. Whenever it happened, he’d feel his pulse slow in his veins, the nauseous swell in his stomach temporarily subside. Every time. As if she were somehow siphoning all of his anxiety, all of his suffering, with merely a look.

He looked over to where Gram sat in the passenger seat, her eyes trained on her purse, which sat primly in her lap. She’d been quiet all morning, lost in some faraway place, so that Danny found himself having to say something two or three times before she heard him.

After Danny had stormed out on her that night, he drove around aimlessly for two hours before he eventually ended up at Leah’s apartment. Gram had said she was doing it because she wanted Danny to have a chance to say good-bye.