Chapter 26

Dell had forgottenthe colors of Michigan in the fall.

There were colors in Oregon, yellows and oranges and an occasional red, but not like this. Even at the tail end of the season, the trees of his home state knocked him out.

There wasn't a direct way to fly into the UP, at least not if you didn't have your own prop plane. And Dell might have been milking the fruits of his previous real estate boom life for the last several years, but even he wasn't Luce County Airport rich.

Still, Dell tried to savor the long drive north from Detroit: the lakes and the colors, the peaceful flatness and occasional rolling hill. Told himself he was comforted by the trees, even as he drew farther north, as the branches became more bare. He wondered, distantly, if the UP would have snow. He hadn't thought to look at the weather. He hadn't been able to think about much from the second he'd gotten the phone call. He remembered Mae's eyes, the way she'd cautiously held out a hand in the store after he'd hung up; the way she'd held him in bed before he had to get up at 3 a.m. to drive to PDX. He remembered the drive to Portland, long and alone and dark.

But all of it, the last twenty-four hours, were a bit hazy. The memories blurry at the edges, like he had only been half there.

The only thing he truly knew was that Georgia was in the hospital.

He stopped once at a Culver's for some food—lunch or dinner or something else, he couldn't say; a rest stop or two when he needed it. But mostly he pushed on until he reached the Mackinac Bridge, and then a bit further than that. Until he was actually home. Until he was at that hospital.

And only when he locked the rental car with a beep, only when he walked through the whooshing automatic doors, only when he cleared his throat to actually speak to another human for the first time in hours did the haze go away. When he was being led to his mother's room, he was strikingly, solidly awake.

Dell knew most folks hated hospitals, but there was something about them that soothed him now. Hospitals had taken care of him after he'd been shot. The doctors and nurses and assistants had been kind as his brain and body attempted to adjust to a new life. This hospital was keeping his mother alive. This hospital was holding his mother safe.

Someone else was in charge.

Someone else was going to help.

Maybe he only felt this strange comfort inside these sterile spaces because he and Georgia had been on the lucky side of things. And from the scraps of information he remembered from the phone, Georgia had been extremely lucky. She'd been at the grocery store when she collapsed. Amelia Hawkins had called 9-1-1 from the bakery department straightaway.

Except then the nurse opened the door, and Georgia was asleep.

"The doctor will be in when she can to give you an update, but her vitals are good," they'd said, and then they were gone, and it was just Dell and Georgia. And she looked so fine, other than the oxygen hooked up to her nose, the IV in her arm. She looked so peaceful. Maybe she was okay. Dell wanted to take her home.

And he had missed her so much, he always missed her so much, that seeing her at all, hospital bed or not, made him collapse into the bedside chair like a crumpled up Culver's wrapper.

He didn't cry. But he scooted the chair as close as he could. Rested his head next to hers, the only place there was space, chin on her shoulder.

And within a few minutes, he was asleep.

* * *

"Lots of good news here," Dr. Collins said, an uncertain number of hours later. Georgia was still asleep. "Because of how quickly she got to us, we were able to restore blood flow to the brain using the least invasive treatment possible. We'll do another CT scan soon to make sure things are still stabilized and there isn't any excess intracerebral bleeding. In terms of her recovery, we'll be doing plenty of tests in the coming days and weeks, but our initial monitoring over the last few hours has been very positive. Her motor and sensory skills seem minorly impaired, and she was able to swallow some water, which is great. She is suffering from aphasia, which might make it difficult for her to speak with you when she wakes up. It's common after a stroke, but hopefully the effects of that will also lessen over time. Neuroplasticity is an amazing thing. What we'll be focusing on for now…"

Dell prided himself on being pretty good at retention of information, but something in his own brain failed him here. Because about the time Dr. Collins said she was able to swallow some water like it was a minor miracle, he had a hard time comprehending anything else.

He had thought, after he'd almost died, that he did a good job at appreciating being alive. At least, he tried his best. Even immediately after a trigger, when he was shaky and weak, he was always grateful to still be alive. To still be surrounded by trees and water and sky, to have his dogs and his house.

But being grateful for the ability to swallow was something that didn't much cross his mind.

He hated that it had to now.

"The most important thing to know, in general, with strokes," Dr. Collins was saying, "is that there's an increased possibility of stroke patients having another one, especially within the first year. I'm hoping your mother's physical recovery from this one will be relatively smooth, but in addition to rehabilitation, we'll work in the coming weeks on a plan for what we call secondary prevention, to make sure Georgia's as healthy as possible in the aftermath. So that hopefully, we'll never have to have this conversation again."

Dr. Collins gave Dell a reassuring smile. Dell attempted to receive it.

Rehabilitation. A plan. Prevention. Dr. Collins had a plan. Georgia was safe. Everything was okay.

Dell swallowed.

"Okay," he said. "Thank you."

But after she'd left, all Dell could remember were the other phrases she'd said. In the coming weeks. Especially within the first year.

Dell had built her an ADU. He had tried to get her to come to him, but he must not have tried hard enough, and now?—

What if she hadn't been at the grocery store? What if she wasn't, the next time? Someone needed to be with her.

He needed to convince her.

But for now, Georgia had won. Dell was back in Michigan. And only as he watched the sun slowly break through the darkness outside her hospital window did he fully realize that he had no idea how long he'd be here.

He hoped CSNY would forgive him.

He reached out, again, to squeeze his mom's hand.

He hoped Bay Books would, too.

* * *

When Mae was a kid, she always envisioned your forties as being the age you really got old. Jodi and Felix, in her memory, were perpetually in their forties throughout her entire childhood. Even though she knew it wasn't the case, she halfway imagined they were still in their forties now.

But as she stocked her shelves that first week Dell was gone, as she worked on her final project for her small business class, as she made tea and spreadsheets and folded laundry, thinking about Georgia all the while, she understood the truth of your forties. As she had understood when Steve passed away, when Jesus followed.

Your forties weren't really about being old at all.

They were about watching the people you loved most actually grow old.

They were about starting to lose people.

And being utterly unable to stop it.

After almost forty-eight hours of radio silence during which Mae drove to Lincoln City for a matcha latte, and then to Shelly's for French toast, and then to Newport for a walk along the beach with Jodi and Felix, and then to the sea lion caves, to spend some time with other fat and noisy creatures, and pretty much anything else she could do to keep her sanity—Dell did call. As the days stretched, he continued to call, occasionally. To let Mae know he and Georgia were still alive.

Sometimes, when the days stretched just a little too slowly, she broke down and called him. To his credit, he almost always picked up.

But Dell McCleary, as Mae had learned the first time she'd ever spoken with him, simply wasn't that good at the phone.

He answered all of her questions, such as, How is Georgia doing? Is she talking better? Does she have a release day yet? And, How are you holding up? Are you sleeping? What was the last meal you ate?

But he answered simply—fine, a little, no, fine, yes, a hamburger—never offering much more.

And Mae never asked the question she wanted to ask most of all.

When are you coming home?

It was selfish. A mother was more important than a bookstore.

Sometimes she also wanted to ask: can I come?

But somehow that felt selfish, too. Dell was more than capable of taking care of his mother on his own, a woman Mae had never even met. It was presumptuous to assume she had that kind of place in Dell's life, after only knowing him for a few months. After a week of vigorous fucking.

She had committed to Bae Books. Had already told Liv and Olive her planned opening day, mere hours before Dell had received the phone call. Meaning that the majority of Greyfin Bay knew her planned opening day, and while it was possible that half of Greyfin Bay didn't want a queer running a bookstore in their town in the first place, she'd be damned if she proved herself to be a flighty queer on top of it all.

And so half of her conversations with Dell were filled with awkward pauses. Stretches of only breathing as Mae clutched her phone. Of wishing she could reach out and touch him, so badly it ached.

While Mae was always grateful to hear his voice, almost every time she hung up, she found herself feeling sadder than she had before.

She tried blasting Jesus's death party playlist around the store to help perk herself up, once she ceased panic-induced sea lion hangs and actually got back to work. But the truth was, she'd listened to these tracks so many times by now that even they started to make her feel sad. Even Judy.

Especially Judy.

Mae didn't want to keep thinking about the death party anyway. About the ocean outside her door that held Jesus's ashes.

She wanted to remember Jesus.

She wanted to remember trivia nights and excursions to try new restaurants; she wanted to remember Moonie's. She wanted to remember that one time they went snow tubing at Mt. Hood Skibowl, how she didn't think she'd ever heard Jesus laugh that hard, cheeks deep crimson with the cold and his glee, and Jesus was a man who lived to laugh. She wanted to remember the year they tried joining a queer bowling league, how Jesus had been the worst among them, his attempts at flinging the ball down the lane so bad they made Steve laugh until he'd cried, and Steve, in contrast to his husband, wasn't a man born to laughter. The nearby team of butch lesbians had been so far superior that it eventually made Theo salty enough that the games weren't really fun anymore, and they'd quit. But Mae wanted to remember how Steve later revealed that Jesus sometimes stopped by the bowling alley on Monday nights anyway, just to say hi to the butches.

She wanted to remember the murmur of his voice, the rumble of his laughter through her office wall. She missed the donuts he always brought to the center on Fridays. She missed hearing his thoughts on the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

She built her inventory, and she posted a countdown on social media, and she cried a little.

And then she went home to the dogs.

Half of her wanted to return to the ADU, to at least temporarily forget the days she'd spent in Dell's bed beside him, but she had to take care of the dogs.

Young adapted to her presence as the apparent new master of the household the best, happily jumping on her thighs each time Mae returned home. Stills was always stoic or sleeping. But Crosby and Nash, the golden retriever and the pittie, whined almost constantly for Dell, in the beginning.

"I know," she said, every night, wrapping herself around Nash, the one most willing to be hugged. "I know. I miss them, too."