He knows me so well.Toowell. And he got the not-so-subtle hint. I should be relieved. Instead, I want to cry.
It’s for the best,I tell myself.
Before I can respond, my phone rings. My mom’s contact picture lights up my screen.
“Hey, Mom. Sorry, I’m still waiting for—”
“She’s awake!” Mom’s exultant cry cuts me off.
“What?”
“Farmor woke up.” I can hear the tears in Mom’s voice. “And she’s still with us—it’s still her.”
I clutch a fist to my chest, my heart squeezing to the point of pain. It’s the best possible news ... and of course, I am still stuck atthishospital instead of being there by her side. “Stay with her. I’ll find someone to come get me.”
“I can’t make you do that. I’ll come.”
“Mom,” I say, patient but firm. “Farmor has been in acoma. She needs you a lot more than I do. I’m fine. I’ll get over there as fast as I can.”
It takes some convincing, but I finally get her to agree to go back into the room with Farmor, and we hang up.
I sit on my bed, head bowed, partially in shock and partially overcome with gratitude. It came so much later than we hoped, but we got miracle number two after all.
I leave Hunter’s text unanswered as I gather my things and pull up Uber. Maybe it’s better to never respond again. He got the message. Now I need to leave him alone so he can move on.
Even though it’s unbearably painful, in the long run, I know it’s for the best. Better to hurt him a little bit now than to destroy his life in the future.
When I open the door to the room where Farmor was transferred, my heart hammers against my rib cage. Nothing can prepare me to see her sitting up in bed after all this time, her eyes open and alert, holding my mom’s hand in hers.
I burst into tears.
“Oh,sötnos. Come here,” she says; I’ve never heard a sweeter sound in my life. Her speech is slightly slurred because, apparently, there is some paralysis on the right side of her body—mostly in her face and right hand. But to have gone through what she did and come out with so few complications truly is a miracle—an answer to our endless prayers.
I rush to her bed but force myself to be gentle as I sit beside her to hug her for the first time in weeks. In that moment, as Farmor wraps her arms around me as best she can, nothing else matters. Everything—all the worry, the anger, the questions, the heartbreak—all of it drains away, leaving only a relief so overwhelming that it feels like falling. “I love you,” I blurt out. “I love you so much.”
Farmor’s left arm tightens around me. “Jag älskar dig, också, sötnos.”
There will be plenty of time to ask her my questions, to find out the truth of why she stayed with my grandpa, and to tell her what happened with Hunter, but for now, we hold each other and cry.
For that brief moment, Farmor’s lilting voice, telling me she loves me in Swedish, her soft arms around me, is exactly what my wounded heart needs. For the first time since the horrible realization at my New Life party, a wave of peace washes over me, gently carrying away the pain.
That reprieve is almost as miraculous as her waking up—proving that perhaps itispossible to survive the devastation of losing Hunter and having to carry the burden of knowing his sister’s life was the cost for mine.
I may never find happiness like Hunter and I had again, brief as it was, but at least I know there is hope for healing—hope of not always feeling as though I’ve been cleaved apart.
“Now, tell me: What’s happening at my bakery?”
I pull back with an unsteady laugh, trying not to let my mind go to Hunter’s texts from earlier, echoed by my mom’s much more effulgent laughter from her chair beside the bed.
“There’sthe Siv I know and love,” Mom says.
And then we’re allreallylaughing, even me—laughter that feels cleansing, somehow. An acknowledgment that thisisreal. That she’s really okay and life with Farmor really is going to keep going.
“I’m serious,” Farmor says when our laughter dies down into giggles. “Tell me everything I’ve missed.”
It’s not until the next day when I’m alone with Farmor in her hospital room, helping her finish her dinner, that she peers up at me and says, “What is it?”
I startle and look around the room. “What is what?”
