Dell couldn’t summon a reply. Until later, when Georgia had completed the puzzle, and eaten some soup for lunch, and they both sat together in front of the TV while the snow continued to come down, rating the costumes onLet’s Make a Deal.
“Make Rosemary come with you,” he said during a commercial break. “Whenever you decide to come visit Greyfin Bay.”
Georgia was silent.
“Or someone. Wait for me to come and fly out with you. Just…don’t fly alone, okay? Please. I’ll stop talking about the ADU. Promise. This is the only compromise I’ll demand.”
Another thirty-second commercial break later, Georgia patted Dell’s knee.
“Okay, kid,” she said. “Okay.”
* * *
Time grew sticky as the air grew cold.
Some days passed fast, some dragged slow. Dell watched Georgia get better at some things, struggle with others. They bickered. He watched more TV than he had in years. They ate casseroles, the opposite of Dr. Collins’s secondary prevention plan, but you couldn’t stop the Midwest from being the Midwest. Couldn’t let kindness, or cheese, go to waste. Georgia relayed stories he’d never heard before.
Dell worked on accepting it. That Georgia wouldn’t join him in his After.
Some days, it felt like he’d been stuck here, in his oldest Before, for ages. He knew he should be communicating with Mae more, but he just felt so far away. From Mae, from the dogs, from Greyfin Bay. He could barely remember what it all smelled like.
Eventually, as the snow piled up, a new realization started to dawn.
Maybe he hadn’t been working hard enough. At actually healing.
Maybe he needed to meld all of his Befores, all of his Afters.
Maybe he needed to stitch it all back together.
* * *
One morning while Georgia still slept, Dell opened his laptop. He logged in to MLS, the real estate database he’d used for the last twenty-five years of his life. He typed in his hometown.
A day later, through icy winds, Dell once more walked some property.
Some land he could borrow. A patch of the earth to conserve.
A new space to help him stitch himself together.
* * *
“Hey, Mom,” Dell said one afternoon as he looked out the window of the living room. The sun was peeking through the clouds, slanting through bare trees. “Do you know what Michigan’s state flower is?”
“You know, I don’t believe I do,” Georgia answered. “Or maybe I did one day, and my brain hasn’t recaptured it. Google it for me, hon. That’s a thing I’d like to know.”
thirty
Mae hiredKarizma after Bay Books’s opening weekend.
After the second weekend, she hired Zeke.
Both part-time, and she worried she wouldn’t be able to sustain even those part-time hours after the holiday rush was over. But for now, they were a small team. For now, they helped Mae keep her head above water.
She spent more time in the office than she ever had before, as the days went by. Going over sales and inventory and budgets, schedules and payroll, each day after closing time.
As she had known it would, that day it happened, the desk always made her think of Dell.
She didn’t always remember the details of that day specifically, but rather, the essence of Dell McCleary she missed most. Being alone in her office while the sky turned dark offered an opportunity to truly indulge in these things. His broad shoulders and his soft belly, the weight and reassurance of him. His stubbornness and determination: a person without pretense, a person who needed to get thingsright. Whether it was crafting bookshelves or trying on the idea of polyamory or taking care of his mother.
