4. Tomorrow

4

Tomorrow

I left the nursing station with my heart in my hands.

The nurses marveled at Nan’s fire, astounded by her iron will. I loved to hear them talk about her, soaked it up like a parched sponge. But after a few minutes their awe gave way to compassion, and I turned my face away.

The tomorrows Nan promised me were coming to an end, I didn’t need to see the reminder in their eyes.

All the same, every night I prayed for just one more.

My heels clicked along the corridor toward her room, the staff members I’d gotten to know over the past six weeks calling out greetings and updating me on her morning shenanigans as I passed.

I swear the woman was half fae.

My Nan waited for no one’s validation, owned her role as heroine in her own story, and as legend told it, swept my grandfather clean off his feet.

She kept him on his toes every day after until his last.

And then she dropped like a stone in the deepest ocean.

For months, no one or nothing could penetrate her grief. I was too young at the time to truly understand her despair, but I never forgot what she said when she finally came back to herself.

Dad got a new job, one that required him to work one weekend a month. By that time, my grandfather had been gone over a year. Not wanting me left at loose ends, Dad sent me to Nan.

The first few weekends I was bored out of my mind. Then one Saturday morning she woke me up early, took me out for breakfast, then spoiled me rotten at the craft store. Up and down the aisles we walked. If I even looked sideways at something, she bought it.

When we came home, flushed with excitement, I followed her upstairs to her bedroom with my haul. Sitting cross-legged on the wedding ring quilt she had stitched by hand, I spread out my purchases and told her my plans. “What do you think, Nan?”

“You can do anything you set your mind to, pet.”

I looked up to find her sitting at her vanity, the one she’d long since given to me, with her head cocked to the side, studying her reflection.

And I studied her.

“Time to write a different story,” she murmured.

Leaning closer to the mirror, she smoothed her long-forgotten lipstick over a mouth that had taken on a decidedly downward turn over the past year and a half.

“Hm. This won’t do at all.” Straightening her spine, she smiled at herself in the mirror.

I giggled. “What are you doing, Nan?”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, the twinkle I’d missed flashing for just a moment. “I’m out of practice, pet. I seem to have lost a wee bit of my smile.”

I nodded sagely. “You’ve been sad.”

Her eyes glossed over as she looked through time. “Very sad, pet.”

“Are you better now, Nan?” I looked at her anxiously, my chest tight and achy. “Is your heart not broken anymore?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Sure, won’t it always be broken? That doesn’t mean I can’t write a new story.” She swallowed and ducked her head for a moment before meeting my eyes in the reflection. “A different kind of story.”

“With me, Nan?” I had just gotten her back, and selfishly, I didn’t want to lose her again.

“Ach, pet, you’ll be the star,” she assured me.

My chest puffed out but then I shook my head, feeling bad for her even as I confessed, “I don’t ever want to have a broken heart.”

Slowly spinning around on her little stool, she looked into my eyes and sighed. “Sure, that’s love, Shae darlin.’ Every love story ends with a broken heart.”

True to her word, she wrote herself into an entirely new book.

I was the star.

It was my heart breaking now.

But it was far from the first time.

Watching her waste away while keeping a smile pinned to my face cost me every ounce of energy. Checking her into hospice care was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, but it gave me space to weep.

I stayed with her as many hours as I could every day, the thought of her dying alone haunting every waking minute away from her. At night, when I crawled home to bed, memories I thought long buried swam to the surface.

For the longest time, it had been Dad and me. My memories of my mother comprised of a fleeting sense of warmth and safety elicited by the fragrance of her perfume along with a thick mantle of sadness when winter gave birth to spring, where everything was new at the time when everything was lost.

Family photographs filled in the gaps.

Dad showed them to me so often I couldn’t tell where my real memories of my mother ended, and the photographs began. They told the story of a sweet love that changed a woman and a man into a bride and a groom then bestowed upon them a round, smiling baby that bore little resemblance to my current manifestation as an introverted ball of angst.

How different might I have been if my heart had not been so mercilessly bruised as a child?

When my dad first got sick, there was only me at home to help him. Nan and Grampy supported all of us when he lost the fight and could no longer work. All day they managed the restaurant in Mistlevale before one or both of them drove the hour to Sage Ridge late in the evening to sleep at our house.

At seventeen, I wanted nothing more than to spread my wings and fly, but I was bound to the house. Forced to watch my father fade away, an agony doubled by the loss of my mother.

It was only now, watching Nan do the same, that I understood what a privilege it was to see him through his final act.

Thoughts of my father inevitably led to memories of Gabe, and my colossal fuck-up when I walked away from him.

I didn’t give him a chance. Instead, I embraced the loss before it could sneak up on me.

Now a second chance dangled well within my reach. And I was still running.

I rounded the corner, rapped on her doorframe, and steeled myself. “Knock, knock, Nan.”

“Ach, hello pet,” she rasped. “What time is it?”

“Past time for you to get up, lazybones,” I teased as I crossed to her bed and kissed her sunken cheek. I smiled into her eyes and propped the pillows at her back before flopping into the chair beside her.

She tipped her chin up. “How was your smutty book club with the girls?”

“Interesting.”

“Oh?” She perked up.

I leaned back and stroked the delicate curl of a trailing vine. I’d tried to bring as many of the comforts of home as possible.

Plants from home lined her windowsill interspersed with dollar store LED candles flickering in the tiny Belleek pottery village of churches and lace pierced thatched cottages. Sea scented essential oils wafted from the diffuser to compensate for what the fake candles lacked.

It was a poor facsimile to the land of her youth.

“One of the girls is going through some stuff with her family. She’s been just as isolated as me but for different reasons,” I answered.

Nan listed to the side, unable to hold herself steady even with the pillows. I quickly grabbed two more and stuffed them under her arms.

“Better?”

“Grand.” She nodded toward the tiny village. “See those? I gave them to your mother when she married your dad. I kept them safe for her all these years. Now they’re yours.”

I sucked in a breath.

She was deteriorating by the hour. Guilt and panic churned in the hollow between my ribs. I shouldn’t have gone out.

She smirked. “I can read your mind, Shae. I don’t want you here every minute of every day, love.”

“And what if I want to be here with you?” I snapped.

“Sure, you’re here now, aren’t you?” She rolled her eyes. “Here’s me, standing at death’s door ‘til the balls of me legs turn to the front and you’re still giving me cheek.”

I laughed to cover my tears, a harsh bark grossly out of place in the quiet.

Nan patted my hand and reminisced of times long past and those who’d left her behind.

“Your da, now, he was a handful.” She laughed softly. “He was a good lad, gone far too soon. Ach, but he’s with your mum, now.”

She had rarely spoken of my father. When she said his name, tears threatened, and she clamped her mouth shut. Now? She didn’t hesitate.

As if she knew the grieving was near over.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and smiled while the little girl inside me wailed like a banshee. Lurching to my feet, I smoothed her wedding ring quilt across her lap and tucked it around her legs.

“He was here last night, him and your mum.”

My head whipped up to look at her.

She rolled her eyes. “Ach, don’t look so bloody surprised, sure you know it’s not the first time.”

“How did they look?” I breathed.

“Just like I remember,” she murmured then met my eyes. “Happy. Your grandfather will be here, too. I want you to know, I won’t be alone when the time comes.”

My jaw dropped. I had no words. Did she know that was my biggest fear?

Her thin, veiny hand patted mine before flitting over the stitching of the quilt as she continued, “You know yourself, no one ever really leaves .” Her gaze drifted into the past. “ I made this for your grandfather. Did you know that? That man knew me better than I knew myself.”

The same stories, over and over.

Any day now it would be the last time I heard them.

“He was the best, Nan,” I whispered.

Would he be here? Would he come for her?

My memories of him were stronger than those I held of my mother.

Quiet and calm, the eye of Nan’s storm.

I closed my eyes. He would be here.

Like a dog with a bone, Nan returned to her favorite topic. “You need someone who sees you.” Her knowing gaze sank clear through to my soul, the twinkle present even still. “But you’ve never been willing to take on a man who has the balls to look.”

“Oh my gosh, Nan,” I choked. “Balls?”

She smirked. “Eyeballs.”

I rolled my own eyeballs and snickered.

There was only one man who had ever really seen me.

But what did we know about life or love at our age?

Perhaps the passage of time had romanticized our connection in my memory, turning us into something we weren’t, setting every subsequent relationship against a standard that didn’t exist.

No different than anyone else, I was a mix of dark and light, hot and cold, blessed and cursed. Over the years, I learned there were few who would accept the dark with the light.

For most, it proved to be too much.

Nan’s sigh interrupted my mental musings. “Go on home and get some rest, pet. I hate seeing you in this place.”

I snorted.

“This place” was the best palliative care money could buy.

There was not a single set of scrubs to be seen. Nurses and healthcare workers blended in with the visitors, only their nametags and the stethoscopes hanging around their necks differentiating them. That and the air of peace they carried in direct contrast to those who anxiously waited to say their final goodbyes.

With its wide oak floors, antique crown molding, and warm walls adorned with paintings donated by local artists, it looked more like an upscale bed and breakfast.

I’d brought so many of her things from her bedroom at home, I could no longer bear to go in. It was as if she was already gone.

Despite its beauty, Nan was right. It was still a place of death.

“You’re going to write yourself a beautiful story, pet, and from where I’m going? I’ll have a front row seat.”

I sniffed and swiped a finger under my nose like a child before grabbing a tissue.

“Away with you. A beautiful flower like you should be soaking up the sun.” Her eyes twinkled. “I won’t die tonight.”

I smiled weakly at her promise, a sheen of tears blurring her beloved face. Viciously tamping down the frozen ball of dread blocking my windpipe, I choked, “Tomorrow would be better?”

“Infinitely, my pet,” she assured me softly.

I almost succeeded in swallowing my sob.

I’d have sold my left leg to have an infinite number of tomorrows with her. Leaning forward, I brushed my lips across her petal soft cheek and pressed my forehead to hers. “I love you, Nan.”

She scoffed lightly as she closed her eyes and gently patted my cheek. “Go on with you and your blattin.”

I huffed out a laugh and straightened, nodding before spinning away on my heel. I was almost at the door when she called my name.

I twisted to look over my shoulder. Facing her head on would only reveal my tears. And we did not cry in my family.

“Yes, Nan?”

“I was wrong, pet.”

The uncustomary gravity in her voice slid through the crack in my armor and spun me around. I cocked my head to the side as I faced her fully. “Wrong about what, Nan?”

“You’re not a flower.” Stripped of all artifice, her love and grief for leaving me laid bare, she whispered, “You’re the sun.”

She held my gaze steadily as I stood frozen in the doorway with tears streaming down my face, lending me her strength even now.

“Sleep well, pet. May the dreams you hold dearest be those which come true.”

How many times over the years had she given me that blessing?

“Tomorrow,” I choked out.

“Yes, pet.” She smiled. “Tomorrow.”

When the phone rang at 1:00 AM, I knew.

Tomorrow had come.